


With Hearts More Proof Than Shields.

by flandersmare



Series: Figrid February 2016 [6]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Combat in the Middle East, Day 6, F/M, Fili is touch starved and doesn't realise, Fili with PTSD, Fígrid February, Locked In, Modern Royalty, Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Relationship, Reluctant Royalty, Sigrid is a fledgling counsellor, it's military there are gonna be some f-bombs, rated for language, the Media can smell blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-15
Updated: 2016-06-18
Packaged: 2018-05-27 00:01:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 23,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6261142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flandersmare/pseuds/flandersmare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fili ran. He wasn’t exactly sure where he was heading, but he’d grown up in these halls. He’d lived his whole life within these walls.<br/>But he was in flight mode and he’d been gone a fair few years. Things had changed and moved and he was still relearning.<br/>And they had CCTV and blueprints. </p><p>Or</p><p>Someone's going to get fired, providing Dwalin doesn't kill them with his bare hands first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 10:24 am

**Author's Note:**

> Well this was an unholy swine to write. Yes, yes I know we are half way through March. I don't care, the damn fics are going to be written even if I'm at it this time next year. Fight me.
> 
> OK, so I've slept. 
> 
> I would just like to take a moment to make it clear, I am not a mental health professional. Everything in ths fic is things I have read and researched, but a lot of this is my gut reaction were I in Sigrid's shoes. 
> 
> Please let me know if I have gotten anything terribly wrong.

After passing through the black wrought iron fence line and into the courtyard, Sigrid found her carefully schooled calm failing her.

She’d gotten herself to London without any mishap. She’d gotten herself across London without getting lost. She’d gotten across St James’s Park, across The Mall and through the wrought iron fence line and the security team defensive line. And was halfway down Stable Yard when her calm decided, nope, it wanted to back home in Lincolnshire. 

Ideally under a duvet.

There was no way she could do this. What was she thinking? Who did she think she was fooling, seriously? They’d see through her in a second. Seriously though, with a wardrobe that was either second-hand or borrowed and a single sheet of headed paper to protect herself with. They were going to eat her alive. She wouldn’t even make it as far as the meeting; they’d turf her out well before that. 

And another thing, why on earth was the meeting going to be 2 hours long? What in the name of heaven did they plan to do to her for 2 hours? 

She couldn’t do this, there was no way she could do this. Dain and Gandalf were both dead to her for putting her up to this and Da for going along with it. She needed to get out of there now, she couldn’t do this, she couldn’t-

‘Are you alright there lass?’

Sigrid span on her charity shop chunky heels to find the speaker. Apparently during her internalised freak out, she’d missed a car trundling into the courtyard and parking up behind her. He was leaning over the roof of a pretty little silver Bentley and removed his, what she assumed to be, chauffeur’s cap as he continued to peer at her in concern. He shut the car door and locked it as he trotted towards her, cap under his arm.

Sigrid realised she still hadn’t spoken and must be looking more and more like a security risk with every passing second. She dug around in her father’s old leather messenger bag that was slung over her back and pulled out the letter she’d received 3 weeks ago. ‘I’m trying to get in,’ she said, hurrying on when he raised an eyebrow at her, ‘I’m here for a meeting. I just don’t know where best to go. I spoke to a Mr Fundinson on the phone and he said best to use the Estate Door when I arrived, but I tried it and it’s locked and no one answered when I knocked and now I’m not sure-’

‘Don’t worry lass, we’ll find you a way in,’ the chauffeur smiled kindly at her from under his horseshoe moustache. He took the letter she proffered like it was her ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ card and gave it a quick scan. ‘Mr Fundinson you say,’ he said, twinkling at her. ‘Was the voice you spoke to grandfatherly or crazy-uncle-y?’

Sigrid blinked at him in astonishment. ‘Umm…?’

‘Did he growl at you?’

‘No?'

‘Right, you’ll be wanting Balin then,’ he said airily. He looked down at the letter again and scanned another line or two before letting out a low whistle. ‘Here to see the lady of the house I see.’

‘Yes,’ Sigrid said a little thickly.

Her new friend grinned at her. ‘You nervous?’

‘Terrified.’

‘Ah don’t be! She’s lovely. Once you get past the imposing façade at least, but that’s the case with the whole family.’ He handed her back the letter, still safely encased in its plastic file pocket and started off across the courtyard. ‘Armour of steel, the whole lot of them. Come on,’ he called gently and Sigrid dashed to catch up, ‘we’ll go find Balin for you. We’ll have to take the tradesman’s entrance,’ he leaned his head towards her, as if imparting a terrible, tawdry secret. ‘Hope you don’t mind.’

Sigrid giggled in spite of herself. ‘Not at all, and thank you so much. I’m sorry for interrupting your day.’

‘Ah, think nothing of it!,’ he said, winking at her. ‘I’m not needed anywhere for a while now anyhow. Was planning on going and checking on my little brother. I’m Bofur, by the way.’ He stuck his hand out between them as they walked and Sigrid shock it gratefully.

‘Sigrid.’

‘Miss Sigrid Bowman according to the letter, but I’m glad to see I get to call you Sigrid.’ Bofur gave her hand a reassuring squeeze before letting go and leading her around a corner of the building. There wasn’t much along this face of the building, just windows, and most of them curtained. A few cars were parked in the sunshine a good few yards away.

So Sigrid was left behind ever so slightly when Bofur suddenly turned to the brick and put his shoulder into a door that Sigrid would have sworn had not been there a second ago. The pair of them walked into the sort of chaos that could only be found in a kitchen in full swing. The sunlight from the high windows glinted off every chrome surface imaginable and the clamour hit you like a physical blow. 

Bofur seemed to ignore it all, forging ahead, dodging white smocked bodies like a dark navy salmon swimming upstream. Sigrid tucked into his slipstream as best she could, clutched her bag to her chest and followed. As they approached a quietly blazing range, Bofur suddenly launched himself at the back of an immense ginger haired man, only for him to be pulled into a genial headlock and a noggie that made Bofur drop his cap. Sigrid maintained her distance, exchanging the odd glance with the various young chefs that smiled at her as they darted past.

‘Sigrid,’ Bofur croaked, ‘this is my little brother Bombur!’ Sigrid blinked.  _ Little? _ Bombur fixed Sigrid with a kind smile, so like his brother’s and, oh there’s the family resemblance. She gave a small wave from her little island in the sea of chef whites and chrome work-benches. ‘We are looking for Balin, do you know where he’d be at this time of day? And why is the estate door locked?’

‘Structural maintenance,’ Bombur said, and Sigrid had to lean forward to hear him. For such a large man, he had a very gentle voice. ‘Hairline cracks in the plaster down to the door warping over last winter. It’s all dust sheet and ladders down that hall. Balin ought to be in the Estate Office at this time of day.’ Bofur nodded and patted his brother on the shoulder, thumbing towards the wide doors over his shoulder. Sigrid followed on, mouthing a ‘Thank you’ to Bombur over the din. ‘Miss,’ Bombur touched his forelock as she passed and she found herself blushing a little.

The noise of the kitchen continued to ring in her ears as she followed Bofur down corridors. He paused here and there to clap a hand to a shoulder or press a kiss to a cheek to be swatted fondly away. He seemed very well liked, and it put Sigrid at ease that the faces turning her way were already smiling.

They eventually reached a heavy wooden door. Bofur turned to her, bring her up short in the corridor and rapped his knuckles smartly on the door. There was a muffled ‘Come in!’ from the other side. Bofur quirked a consoling smile at her before swinging his torso around the door jamb.

‘Mr Fundinson sir, I have here a young lady who was given less than helpful directions.’ There was a moment of silence before Bofur chuckled. ‘A Miss Sigrid Bowman sir, here for a 11 o’clock meeting?’

‘Oh heavens!’, came from inside the room, the same kindly voice Sigrid had heard over the phone, accompanied by the roll of chair casters. Bofur stepped back and an elderly gentleman appeared in the door. His hair and beard were snow white but his beetle black eyes were bright, as was smile her gave her.

‘Ah Miss Bowman, so wonderful to finally meet you my dear.’ He looked across at Bofur with furrowed eyebrows. ‘What do you mean by ‘less than helpful’ Bofur?’

‘The Estate Door being locked and that corridor being something of a no-go area.’

Realisation flashed over the older man’s face and he nodded his head. ‘I am so sorry my dear,’ he held out a hand for Sigrid to shake. ‘That had not occurred to me. I’m Balin, I am Chief of Staff here at Clarence House.’

Clarence House.

She was here in Clarence House. Half an hour early, thankfully, for a meeting with Her Royal Highness, Princess Dis.

Someone had finally said it.

She wasn’t entirely sure where her mind goes for the next 20 minutes or so, but a little before 11 o’clock she was settled in a parlour room, having freshen up in a washroom that was bigger than the living room at home, with a pot of tea at her elbow, her bag at her feet and the gnawing realisation at the base of her skull that the next person to walk through the door would be, first of all, a princess, and secondly, someone with the power to make or break something that had been Sigrid’s life since she was 14 years old.

Sigrid took a deep breath, folded her hands on her lap, let it out and settled in to wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All I can say is God bless google maps. My descriptions of Clarence House are based on what I could garner off google maps and image, but there will be an element of my inner interior designer going crazy. I've never visited the House, but in the course of my research I've found you can. Who knew
> 
> Just a little aside; has anyone else had that? Been called for an interview and found that they expect it to last 2 hours and you are sat there like 'what the hell are you planning to do to me on that time?' Personal record - 4hrs. Which actually turned out to be 5hr. And I still diidn't get the damn job
> 
> Bofur, Bombur, Balin's and, when we get to him, Dwalin's roles within the royal house hold are all heavily influenced by perkynurples' [Nothing Gold Can Stay](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1047210/chapters/2094253). And when I say 'influenced', I mean flat out plagarised because now I've read NGCS I can't see it any other way. 
> 
> But seriously, you want a Hobbit Modern Royality AU? Why are you reading this drivel? Seriously go read it. Go read it now. Go go go! Have you life improved no end.


	2. 10:55 am

Fili ran.

He wasn’t exactly sure where he was heading, but he’d grown up in these halls. He’d lived his whole life within these walls.

But he was in flight mode and he’d been gone a fair few years. Things had changed and moved and he was still relearning.

And they had CCTV and blueprints.

He could hear distant voices and the steady rumble of footfalls on his tail. He dove around a corner and took off again. The halls had been mercifully empty. He put it down to the mid-morning tea break. He didn’t need obstacles in his path and he didn’t need witnesses to this. His breath came thin and ragged in his throat and he wrenched off his tie, popping the buttons at his collar. He tossed the tie down a hall to his left and kept running straight on. He just needed a few minutes to get his head in order. He just needed to get away from everyone.

He needed to be alone and to…

_What?_

It hadn’t helped. The dwelling on it, the thinking, the not-thinking, the distractions, the drinking, the keeping quiet, the hoping it would all go away. It hadn’t helped.

And Guru-Murthy would not back down. Fili had deferred, he’d skated and finally flat out refused to answer the questions and still the man would not stop talking! He didn’t know exactly what he’d said or done as he’d pushed himself out of the chair, past the camera crew and out the door. He may have heard Guru-Murthy blustering and Dwalin calling him. He hoped it whatever had happened, the footage would be kind.

Or preferably, never saw the light of day.

Fili emerged onto the house’s main landing and launched himself at the bannister. He perched onto the rail and kicked off, gravity and a lifetime of muscle memory getting him down the stairs quickly and silently. He skidded as he hit the floor of the hallway, the soles of his dress shoes giving him no grip on the old parquet flooring. The momentum pushed him onwards, down the corridor. He could dive out the Estate Door. He could make a break for it and go hide in the gardens or the stable block. Bofur tended to leave the Defender unlocked; he could lie low in the back seat for a while.

He rounded a corner and ran head first into a step ladder. Fili swore and fought to keep upright as it toppled over, dragging a couple of dust sheets with it, clattering as it fell into its neighbour. Fili looked down the length of the corridor; ladders were leaning here and there against the walls, trays of plaster mix covered in film and waiting to be picked up again, and the door, shut, bolted and with the padlock in place. Fili’s blood ran cold as he heard a shout not too far behind. He cast a frantic look over his shoulder and could see, in a distant mirror, the play of shadows and shapes that meant they were on his trail again.

He untangled himself from a dust sheet like a rabbit slipping a snare and took off again. He’d lost a lot of ground at this point; the closest of them were only a corner away. Fili screeched to a halt when he went to turn a corner and find it a dead end. There’d been renovations. He had nowhere to go. He could hear Dwalin’s voice coming down the next hall. Oh Dwalin’d be kind, but he wouldn’t understand. There was only one door in this corridor.

Fili wretched it open and flitted inside, trying to close the door as quietly as possible. He pressed an ear against the wood and heard Dwalin pause at the end of the hallway. There were murmured orders and then the distinctive thud of Dwalin’s gait. Fili darted across the room and threw himself flat of the floor behind one of the two chaises in the room. He rolled under it and hooked his fingers into the springs on the underside, tensing his arms and fighting to get his ragged breathing under control. He sucked in a breath as he heard a click and the door start to swing open and held it and tried to rationalise his heart hammering itself against his ribs.

Fili turned his head and watched as the polished black toes of Dwalin’s oxfords appeared and began to advance into the room, only to stop a few strides in.

‘Oh, I’m sorry Miss. I didn’t know anyone was in here.’

Fili very nearly brained himself on the underside of the chaise as he jerked and twisted in the crawlspace he’d made for himself. The other sofa in the room was at 90° to his, making an ‘L’ with a side table between the two. He looked and only now did he see a pair of brogued, brown heels resting against the front skirt.

_Oh Christ, neither did he!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Krishnan Guru-Murthy, I picked on you purely for that stunt with Robert Downey Jr.


	3. 10:57 am

Sigrid had been trying to identify just which species of parrot had been brocaded into the curtains when the door of the parlour had flown open and snapped shut in the same breath. 

She’d not been expecting that. She’d been expecting a knock and perhaps Balin giving her a kind smile and a 5 second warning for her to say her last prayers.

She has not been expecting Prince Fili to barrel through the door, look around with wild but hollow eyes and then throw himself under the sofa. Sigrid flinched as she heard the thud as he hit the deck and she sat rigid with shock, fingers twisting in the folds of her box-pleat skirt. 

She didn’t have the time to do or say anything before the door was flying open again, and one of the most formidable men she had ever seen stooped through the doorway. The dome of his bald head was latticed with scars and tattoos and the close cropped beard reflected that, the dark brown shot through with grey. His thunderous expression slipped when he spotted Sigrid, and he looked about as shocked to see her as she was to see him. He took another step forward and Sigrid fought not to shrink into the sofa cushions.

‘Oh,’ he said and now he’d straightened up, Sigrid saw that he was wearing a similar uniform to the Balin and Bofur. Dark navy double breasted suit and a similarly dark blue tie shot through with silvery grey. She noted the ID clipped to his breast pocket and the translucent coil of wire leading to an ear piece. 

Security then. 

‘I’m sorry Miss. I didn’t know anyone was it here.’ His gaze started to travel the room and Sigrid found herself scrambling to stand up.

His graze flicked back to her and she tried her best at placating smile around her nerves. ‘Is everything alright, Sir?’

He grunted, scanning the room again. ‘Has anyone come in here Miss?’

Sigrid wasn’t quite sure of the exact moment she made her choice, but she could no doubt justify it. She’d seen eyes like that before. Different faces, same eyes.

She frowned in confusion and blinked. ‘No? Umm, I’m waiting for a meeting but I’ve not seen anyone yet. Is everything alright? There sounds like there’s a bit of a commotion out there.’ 

_ Do not look at the sofa, do not look at the sofa. _

‘Everything’s fine Miss,’ the gentleman said, the words coming out in a reassuring burr. ‘We’ve just had a slight containment issue, nothing to worry about.’

‘Oh,’ Sigrid feigned a surprised little head tilt. ‘Have the corgis made a break for it?’

The stranger barked a laugh, surprising himself. ‘Not exactly. Not quite that simple I’m afraid.’ He cast one more look around the room and nodded to her. ‘Sorry to disturb you Miss.’

‘That’s quite alright,’ Sigrid said with a bright smile. She settled back down onto the cushions, broadcasting ‘ _ I intend to stay here and not be a bother, there is nothing to worry about here _ ’ as loudly as she could. She folded her hands on her lap again and breathed a sigh as the giant nodded to her and turned to head out the door again. 

She dropped her head into her hands as the door clicked shut and cast a look over to the other sofa. She could see the slight shadow under it shifting ever so slightly. There was another faint click from the hallway but Sigrid did her best to sit quietly and wait. 

She wasn’t sure how long she sat staring at the empty fireplace, but there was a rustle of movement and Prince Fili was darting across her field of vision.

Right, she’d not hallucinated that in a fit of nerves then. 

Good to know.

Sigrid tried not to look directly at him as he moved, like he was some mythical creature that would disappear if she looked too closely. OK, so she’d mentally prepared herself for Princess Dis, well had tried to at any rate, but this was a whole different story. 

Thankfully, there wasn’t time for Sigrid to melt into puddle of remembered pre-pubescent crushes and teen-aged fantasies. It was possibly the only mercy afforded to them in the next few minutes.

Sigrid’s head snapped up when the rattling at the door became frantic. The Prince was hunched over the door handle, twisting and yanking at it, and it wasn’t budging. Sigrid’s mind played back the audio from the last few minutes and her eyes widened and her blood chilled as Fili started throwing his shoulder into the door.

_ Oh Lord, we’ve been locked in. _


	4. 11:19 am

Sigrid watched as the collar of Fili’s shirt darkened further. He'd stopped trying to break the door open after a few minutes, and now just leaning against it.

Sigrid couldn’t see his face. In the initial panic, she’d shucked off her shoes and jacket and stood up carefully. The prince didn't seem to notice her presence at all. She’d tried talking to him, but he had ignored her or he couldn’t hear her as she called to him between the thumps. He now stood slumped against the door, his hands still wrapped around the handle and his sides blowing like a racehorse’s. What she could see of his face was grey; sweat creating a sheen on skin on the back of his neck. She lingered, propping her shoulder against the mantle and waited.

She could see the point where he was starting to come back to his own head. He sagged a little further and ground his forehead into the wood, rocking his head from side to side. She got a better at his face; plaid and a little clammy under the burnish of his beard. There were shadows under his closed eyes and even with a bowed spine, those parts of him that weren't shaking where tight with tension.

He swallowed thickly, she could hear his throat working, and turned bleary eyes on her. It was the first time he’d looked at her. Oh, he’d laid eyes on her when he first burst in, but he’d not really see her then.

‘Hello,’ she said softly. She kept her distance and tried to make herself as small as possible, crossing her arms in front of herself. A part of her brain that hadn’t gone into a state of vigilance noted that he was about her height. Strange, she thought he’d be taller. He blinked at her tiredly for a few seconds before his eyes cleared. Sigrid maintained her slight smile even as she watched the shutters snap shut behind his eyes.

It was like someone had stung him. He shoved himself away from the door in a burst of sudden energy. He staggered into the cleared space in the middle of the room between the two sofas, glaring at her.

‘Who are you?’

‘Sigrid.’

‘That’s a name,’ the Prince bit out. Red was starting to infuse the grey on his face. His jaw flexed and Sigrid could tell he was gritting his teeth. His head tipped forwards a little and he glowered at her from under lowered brows. ‘Who are you?’

_Stay small, stay in sight, stay slow, stay calm._

Sigrid pushed slowly off the mantel piece and immediately moved sideways, her toes dragged on the fringe of the rug in front of the fireplace as she padded across to the sofa the Prince had hidden under. She perched on the edge of the cushions and looked up at him with, hopefully, placid eyes.

‘My name is Sigrid, Your Majesty. I’m scheduled to have a meeting with your lady mother today at 11.’ Sigrid twisted her wrist slightly. ‘Nearly 20 minutes ago,’ she added uneasily. ‘I’m here today to talk to her about, umm, if she’d be interested in being a patron. Of my organisation.’ Fili’s expression hadn’t changed, he’d spun with her to keep her in his sights but he’d kept hold of the open ground. Sigrid sighed and tucked her hands under her thighs. ‘But, I suspect, with all that is happening out there, it’ll need rescheduling.’ She smiled at him even as his expression darkened further and his shoulders began to creep up towards his ears.

‘You’re not Press.’ At some point, it may have been a question, but there was a bite to it that made it an accusation.

‘No, I’m not with the press. I’m here on charity work.’

The fight bled out of him at that. There was still wariness in him, but he no longer looked like he wished to scale the walls. He dragged both hands down over his face and let out a ragged breath that seemed to take more from him than it ought. He looked ready to pitch over.

‘You want to come sit down?’

She was treading on uncharted ground at this point, making suggestions, but if he found anything amiss, he made no show of it.

Fili’s arms dropped and with that motion, he seemed to be on a downward slide, across the room and onto the other end of Sigrid’s sofa. He slumped forward, elbows on his knees and head in his hands. The trembling was back.

Sigrid looked at her watch again. Over 20 minutes now and she’d still not heard any movement from outside. Sigrid sighed and reached over for tea set at her elbow. She’d taken out the tea bag a good while back but it was most likely stone cold now. She took a sip, only grimacing a little and lent back into the cushions again. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Prince shift and she remembered the dry noises of his frantic breathing.

‘It’s gone cold, but can I pour you a cup?’ she asked, feeling just a little ridiculous offering cold tea to PRINCE FILI in what was effectively his own living room. Or his mother’s at least. ‘Or I have a bottle of lemonade in my bag. Don’t worry, seal’s not been opened.’

If Sigrid had been watching herself from across the room, she’d probably be bent double laughing at this point. She could feel herself going into the ‘mode’. The persona she adopted when on the phone to stakeholders or the press or anyone who wanted anything from her that wasn’t her help. Her accent went all Home Counties and she held onto consonants and Oh God, he probably thought she was taking the piss.

Fili just turned to look at her from under his hands. Well, he looked at her right knee at any rate.

‘I’d be very grateful for the lemonade. Thank you.’

Sigrid felt her eyes widen as she reached into her bag and pulled out the bottle of cloudy lemonade. Good old Boots meal deal. She passed it over and Fili took it, twisting the cap with a snap and a hiss and downing a third on the first pull.

‘Why are they chasing you?’

And that mouthful very nearly saw daylight again. Fili bent double, coughing between his knees but thankfully the carpet stayed dry. Fili’s eyes flashed at her, anger curling his top lip. ‘They’re not chasing me!’

‘Then what are they doing?’

Sigrid recognised she was playing with fire on this. And that they were both locked in the same room together with no safe space.

And that he was _HEIR TO THE FREAKING THRONE!_

But, of course, she’d gone into that damn mode. Also the alternative was to sit in silence and keep her internal screaming internal until she strained something.

She ignored the snarl that came from the other end of the sofa. Fili got to his feet like he was a darted animal and pushed off. She got the impression that he intended to pace, but didn’t have the energy. He leant against the fireplace, resting his forehead against the ornate mirror above it.

‘Who are you, anyway?’

Sigrid blinked but pursed her lips. Short term memory loss wasn’t something she’d come across before, but it was possible. ‘My name is Sigrid and I’m-‘

‘That’s a name! We established this, why are you here?’ Fili bit out. ‘Who sent you? Who do you work for?’

Sigrid went with blunt.

‘I’m here because my advisor and The Duke of Montrose are both family friends and damn, meddling fools.’

There was a slight ‘thunk’ as Fili twisted to look at her in shock, catching his head on the mirror and knocking it against the wall. ‘Dain!?’

‘Yes. Well, Brigadier Ironfoot as he was first introduced to me.’

‘How the hell do you know Dain?!’

Sigrid tried not to take offence at the tone but she was willing to beat the look in her eye was sardonic.

‘He and my father served together.’

That killed some of the fire in his eyes. Sigrid watched as he stilled and cocked his head ever so slightly. She gave him a small smile and continued. ‘My father was a sniper with The King's Dragoon Guards in the initial invasion of Afghanistan. Granted he was just a Sergeant, but he saved Dain’s life on two occasions. The man insists on being in the thick of. Dain’s kept in touch since when Da was discharged in 2004.’ Sigrid shrugged and clasped her hands together on her knees. ‘He heard about what we’re doing, wanted to help, got talking to my course supervisor, made a few calls and now the two of them are dead to me.’

During her little speech, Fili’s posture had minutely changed. His back had straightened and his shoulders had gone back. If he dropped his arm down off the mantel piece, Sigrid won’t have been surprised if he adopted parade rest.

The Prince’s deployment with the Army was something that had been documented in every possible avenue; newspapers, blogs, news reports, trashy mags, twitter feeds. Sigrid had been quietly surprised that he was able to serve at all, the risk being so huge. But by all reports, he’d handled himself remarkably well. He’d seen, what, two tours now? One each in Afghanistan and Iraq. His younger brother was still out there with the Royal Air Force. Sigrid knew the next question was coming, but she really didn’t want him to ask it.

‘And what is it you’re doing that got Dain involved?’

Sigrid bit her lip and sighed through her nose. She just looked Fili in the eye for a second and patted the cushion of the sofa. She’d have to wait for him to come to her. Story time it was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My family have military ties; Signals, Military Police, Kings Troop, I was attached to Tayforth UOTC for four years. But this fic benifited a lot from the [British Army website](http://www.army.mod.uk/home.aspx), for helping me get things like appropriate regiments in the right theatres of operations with relevant kit. I had to do a bit of wiggling but this was really helpful to anyone who needs these sorts of things answered. 
> 
> Dain is so based off my old Commanding Officer.
> 
> For anyone outside the UK who doesn't know: Boots meal deal. Boots is a chain buiness of pharamcies, health care and cosmetics, which also does a meal to go of the sandwich-snack-and-drink variety.


	5. 11:33 am

‘When Da came home, it wasn’t easy. Actually, scrap that, it was terrible, but we needed him home. Our mother had been diagnosed with a very aggressive cancer. The doctors predicted she had between 3 and 10 days. She lasted 6.’

Sigrid tried not to linger on that memory. It had been 11 years ago and the worst summer of her life. She’d still not really grieved, just occasionally the scab would be knocked off and a little more of it bleeds and she’d suddenly be incapacitated like someone had ripped her lungs out of her chest. At the time, she’d clenched her jaw and held her father up while the tears stood in her own eyes.

‘Da came home. His was discharged as fast as possible but he wasn’t fast enough to say goodbye in person.’ Sigrid dropped her eyes to her hands in her lap, idly rubbing them together. She found she couldn’t look at Fili at that moment

This wasn’t usually her place; she wasn’t usually the one telling her story. At least not first. Dear God, she hoped she never looked at anyone with those eyes while they’d been telling their story. They were wide and pale in his face and what little colour that had returned to his cheeks was leeching away again. Sigrid got the distinct impression he was panicking. She sighed and patted the cushions of the sofa again.    

‘Da was not good when he came home,’ she continued when she felt the cushions dip slightly. ‘We’d lost our mother, very quickly, and he came home to three kids. I was 14, my brother was 11, my sister was 6. He didn’t know what he was doing, he made sure we knew and understood that. He was determined to do the very best he could for us. But Da was a career soldier, and he didn’t have a support network.’ She sighed again and look up, staring intently at the wallpaper besides the door. ‘Da went out with the first wave of the Iraq invasion, when we didn’t fully understand what we were getting into and numbers weren’t right and equipment was still basic. Da was with the Dragoons, on the ground and out there pretty fast. He experienced things over there, everyone does. But the armoured vehicles, they weren’t what was needed, as I’m sure you know. The Saxon, the Viking, the US’s Stryker. Da saw contact, but it’s the IEDs that scared him. He said he’d been trained in combat and how to control a fire fight, but no amount of training could prepare him for seeing a 10 tonne vehicle carrying his friends and colleagues disappear 20 yards in front of him. It took him years to feel safe enough to drive. On UK roads.’ 

She smiled ruefully and cast a look over at Fili. ‘Makes finding and keeping a job tricky. He took jobs were he could get them, we all pitched in when we could. We were all we all had. Mum was orphaned at a young age and Da’s Ma died the year before he deployed out. But he needed help. Trying to support himself, three kids and manage the symptoms of the PTSD? He wasn’t sleeping or really eating. I went in search of help for him. I tried to talk him into finding someone to talk to, but there was always an excuse. I found Galadriel through Help for Heroes. Oh’, Sigrid started a little as Fili lent forward. ‘No, I’m not here for Help for Heroes. They were very helpful and supportive, and they truly do incredible work but we very quickly discovered Da didn’t need their sort of help.’ 

Fili’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline and Sigrid found her own hand going up placatingly. ‘It was Da more than them. And it was… it was silly in hindsight but ‘Help for Heroes?’ The majority of people who find us… they don’t feel they deserve that title. For a variety of reasons. Or they don’t feel like they’re entitled to it? Mental health, mental trauma, the stigma that goes with it. But it isn’t something visible and obvious and it isn’t something people understand or are well versed in. Many got the ‘stiff upper lip’ or ‘work through it’ mantra, as unintentional or as well-meaning as it was meant, while attention is paid to the injuries that can actually be seen and physically dealt with. We found that people who had served with Da hadn’t had the same fortunes as him. He was struggling hard but he was getting by. Percy, his 2 I.C., was living out of the back of his car. H.B., a mechanic, was on the streets well on her way to becoming drug dependant.’ 

Sigrid swallowed a little, her mouth having gone a little dry and she did everything she could to make sure her next few sentences didn’t sound like a sales pitch. ‘I’m here, because between myself, Da, Galadriel and the others, we want to create a network to support military personnel. Well we have one, but it’s rudimentary at the moment. We aren’t fund rich, not at all, but we offer services. Counselling, retreats, respite, help with finding accommodation, work, training, finding support and help in their own areas. We want to help those who don’t feel that can approach the big flagships. Or rather we approach them. We work mainly through recommendation and word of mouth. Our name and contacts details are out to shelters, refuges, military hospitals, other military charities and the like.’

‘And what is your name?’ Sigrid closed her eyes and leaned back with a little huff and a wry smile. She’d been talking so long she’d almost forgotten the sound of his voice. She opened her eyes again and turned in her hollow of pillows to see him staring at her raptly.

‘We’re COMMS,’ she said gently. ‘The Community Of Misplaced Military Service men and women. Or COMMS Link.’ She shrugged. ‘My brother came up with the name.’ She looked down at her hands once again. ‘Dain has kept in touch and he heard about our endeavours. And it turns out he knows my advisor on my physiology course and he in turn knows Galadriel and it’s snow-balled from there. This is all them,’ Sigrid gestured around at the room. ‘Sending me here to ask your mother to be patron to the network. He reasoned she’d be agreeable, knowing that you, your brother, your uncle and your late father have all served.’

He was still staring at her. He’d sat and listened to her little speech and had barely taken his attention off her. She could feel the vibration of his bouncing leg through the seat of the sofa. Sigrid startled a little as she looked around at him again. He’d inched closer without her noticing, an elbow on the stationary knee and a fist to his mouth. 

His eyes were what were grabbing Sigrid’s attention though. Where they’d been glossy and distant, they were now sharp and shining, and an awful lot closer than she’d ever anticipated seeing them.   

‘So you are definitely not Press?’ The words were tight and mumbled around knuckles.

‘Definitely not Press,’ she said, spreading her hands as if journalists could hide notepads and recorders up their shirt sleeves. Then she thought about it. They probably did in his presence. Well her jacket was on the other sofa and she was suddenly aware that the sleeves of her floaty blouse were far from opaque. As was the rest of the garment. Sigrid tried not to fidget and just silently prayed that her camisole was doing its job.

Oh God, she hadn’t anticipated that thought to go through her head today.

Fili said nothing for a moment, but his knee bounced distractedly and his audible heavy breathing through his nose gave the impression he was psyching himself up for something.

‘You don’t want the Press knowing about your PTSD, do you?’

It was a stupid question, but Sigrid was going to air it even if he wasn’t. 

It was like a shot being fired. Fili leapt up from the sofa and scuttled across the room like he’d been burned. His face was a furious twist of emotion, each one wrestling the one before for control of his face, too fast for there to be any clear winner.

‘It’s  _ NOT _ PTSD!’ he hissed. 

‘It's not  _ just _ PTSD,’ she shot back, before he had the chance to build a head of steam. He froze and stared at her, rigid tension in every line of his body. She kept her face blank and just looked at him, hard, from under the shadow of her brows.

She flinched when he finally moved. He doubled forwards, arms going around his stomach and Sigrid was half out of her seat before she heard it. 

He was laughing. Well, she thought it was  _ meant _ to be laughter. It was thin and reedy and he was grinning like he was in shock.

‘So what’s your mantra then?’ he choked out, the grin taking on a scathing twist. ‘“A problem shared is a problem halved?”’

Sigrid blinked slowly at him, try to keep the scoff off her blank face. ‘No. Ours is more a ‘lance the boil, draw the poison, clean the wound, get it bathed, wrap it and care for the scar’. You want to air it,’ and he flinched at the use of ‘you’, ‘to get it out of your own head, you look for validation on these things, to know that it  _ isn’t _ all in your head, regardless of what people say. You get it out and you can face it down. And we try and help in what ways we can.’   

‘OK,’ the manic laughter was still in his voice when he finally spoke again. He must have watched her silently for 5 minutes or so. Well his eyes had been on her at any rate; Sigrid could almost see the spin of clockwork in the blue of his eyes. He crossed to the door again, testing the handle again but it stayed stubbornly locked. 

‘OK, Little Miss Nightline. You’re not Press and we’re not going anywhere fast.’ He looked up from the traitorous door knob, to her, his eyes over bright and a trembling energy that Sigrid highly doubted he could afford had infused him. He seemed to blur at the edges he was shaking so much. ‘You wanna listen to another soldier’s story?’

Sigrid tried to keep the astonishment off her face but she wasn’t sure how successful she was. She knew her eyes were doing that thing, when the muscles of the top half of her face damn near strained themselves in the effort of not moving.

OK. OK, she’d done a bit of counselling before. She’d had training, she’d qualify within a year and Galadriel had let her sit in on some of the group sessions.

But she was not qualified for this. But did she need to be? All he’d asked was for her to listen.

She swallowed so hard her throat clicked and she opened her mouth to reply.

When she was cut off by a gurgling rumble.

Fili flushed, his arms crossing over his stomach and refused to meet her eye.

Sigrid smiled, a soft little huff escaping her. She hefted her messenger bag into her lap, giving her watch a quick glance as she did so. They’d been here for a little over an hour now. And maybe she was getting a little hungry now; she put it down to stress.

‘Can I interest you in half a chicken salad sandwich and some prawn cocktail spirals?’    

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sigrid's Mum lasted as long as my Aunt Jane. My mourning process is pretty much the same.
> 
> The issues of equipment and vechiles that forces were dealing with within theatre of operations has been something that has always made me feel shame; [body armour](http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/feb/01/iraq-inquiry-body-armour),  
> [equipment](http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2003/dec/12/uk.iraq) etc.
> 
> Please, please do not think that I am bashing or belittleing any work done by organisations like 'Help for Heroes', They do incredible work and help so so many people. I've supported them, I've done concerts for both HoHs and TABF. I needed a niche for COMMS to fill.
> 
> It's just, I'm wary of the word 'hero'. You'll see that when Fili gets into his stride.
> 
> If you haven't noticed from any of my other work, I have major feelings regarding the (non book canon) people of Lake Town and Dale, especially Hilda Bianca and Percy. They get in everywhere, I love them.


	6. 12:45 pm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I want to thank  ihearvamps  ,  sukoonandtea  ,  georginx-x  and a few anons on Tumblr who were kind enough to answer a question for me regarding the wearing of a hijab.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning - scenes of military violence, the fall out of war, injury and swearing.

War wasn’t Hell, Fili thought as he chewed. That was something he’d see in his two tours. It wasn’t Hell.

Ask anyone you care to, ask them ‘who goes to Hell?’. And the response will boil down to ‘sinners’. Oh, there will be a myriad of other words to flesh out the list, depending on who you ask, but it was always people who deserved to be there.

No one deserved war. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War has nothing but.

Men, women, children, the old, the infirm, those who can’t get out of the way.

The people who were sent in there.

In fact, except for some of the top brass on both sides, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander.

But he couldn’t say that to Channel 4 could he? He couldn’t smile winningly down the barrel of the camera and say ‘Well Krishnan, while I served, I saw some things that didn’t align with what I believe a soldier should be. And I saw more things that don’t allow me to sleep at night.’

He couldn’t tell the world’s media how his life had changed beyond all recognition.

How every unexpected noise makes a small part of him flinch. How every lull sets his nerves skittering, waiting for the peace to shatter. How doing nothing exhausts him. How he searches every new face he meets for confirmation that he hasn’t seen these eyes before. How he can’t seem to control his body temperature; he was always chilled or over warm. How he couldn’t sleep at night. How he was having difficulty eating. How his night caps had gone from Irish cream, to whiskey, to vodka.

How he’d never seen his mother looking so worn, or his uncle so thin and grey. How he’d had to leave his baby brother behind, in a war zone. How he came back to a family and a monarchy on the brink of a constitutional crisis. How he'd come home to be told he may be ascending to the throne a damn lot quicker than had been otherwise expected.

He couldn’t tell the world media that, he thought as he forced himself to swallow. But maybe he could tell her.

So he did.

Fili had been the heir apparent since the moment of his birth.  
  
Even if there had been a delay in the constitution kicking in and naming him so, Thorin wanted it known to the world. The pictures in the papers after his birth showed him in his mother’s arms, his father at one shoulder and Thorin at the other, sharing in but never intruding on their joy.

When Vili had been killed in action, Thorin stepped up as a father figure. The photos after Kili’s birth show Thorin there in Vili’s stead, Fili propped on his hip and just as red-eyed as his sister.

Dis and her sons were all Thorin has left of his family. At the time Thorin was in his mid-30s and there was no sign of him marrying any time soon. 20 odd years down the line and Britain was still without a Queen. Oh, there’d been vicious comments since the announcement to argue the contrary, but there’s been whispers for years.

Dis had known. Of course she had known. She’s Thorin’s most beloved sister and Thorin has said that, most likely, she known before he did. But Thorin knew it for sure when he met Bilbo Baggins; a fastidious and headstrong historian who had come to raid the royal archives for a book he was writing about Náin II’s mistresses of all things. Fili hadn’t been there for early days, it had all transpired over the course of Fili’s second tour, but his mother had informed him and his brother that it had been at once heart-breaking and hilarious.

Until Lord Smaug had discovered them.

He’d threatened to expose them if Thorin didn’t give his support to policies the prime-ministerial candidate was throwing his considerable weight behind to push through. Policies that would line his own pockets further, decimate the countryside of the north-east and incapacitated so much of the British public. Thorin, in his own special brand of self-destructive nobility, removed the option.

Fili’d been on operations when the truth went live. He’d returned from operations to find Shorabak FOB tense and waiting, his fellow servicemen and women watching him with worried eyes as he was called to the base’s HQ.

He’d been brought home on the next available transporter plane. And the whole flight home, he’d sobbed, with only four flag draped caskets to judge him.

That had been 4 months ago. Thorin had announced to the world that he was gay, the first monarch in modern history, and the upheaval had been immediate.

Thorin had battled with himself and his own heart and soul, for years. He’d finally found a little taste of happiness and he was willing to do anything to protect that. He put his subjects before himself and done the noble thing of refusing to live a lie for one more day.

And he’d caught absolute hell for it.

Fili remembered shouldering his way through dozens of representatives from various Commonwealth countries that were laying siege to Buckingham Palace. All raging and demanding to leave the Commonwealth; Brunei was calling for Thorin’s head.

Fili didn’t remember throwing that punch, but there it was on the front page of papers the next day. His mother has the original photograph framed in her drawing room.

That had added more fuel to a fire that was already billowing out of control. The press had reached new levels of hysteria in the wake of the announcement. The lengths reporters and the paparazzi went to would have been impressive if they hadn’t been so damn dangerous and Dwalin was too noble a man to let anyone kill themselves on his watch. Even if they had it coming.  
  
The Archbishop of Canterbury was still seething and they were still receiving hate mail, phone calls, abuse online and over radio airwaves. People had cashed in on it and it seemed half of Soho had sold fabricated stories to the tabloids. There were voices coming from every direction, people clamouring for Thorin’s abdication.

Fili didn’t remember putting his head in his hands as he’d talked, but he found himself looking up from them as he felt the slightest shift of weight besides him. Her face didn’t give any indication of dismay, but her hands had unfolded in her lap and one now lay open on the seat of the sofa between them. Her eyes never left his face as he looked from her to her hand and back in bewilderment.

‘It’s just there if you want it,’ she said softly. ‘Please, continue?’

For every hateful, poisonous, spiteful word and action that reached the Royal household, a dozen more of support and well-wishing and love came chasing in on its’ heels. The royal household and the majority of the British people and people of the Commonwealth wouldn’t hear a word against Thorin. Fili had never seen a more impressive closing of ranks. Staff had been harassed, Thorin’s old comrades had been chased down and, to a man, they’d stood shoulder to shoulder and not given an inch.

But, no matter what the people wanted, it has to be hashed out on the floors of Parliament.

So, Fili’s back. And people want him to go from a soldier to a political prince on a sixpence.

So she was right, it wasn’t _just_ the PTSD.

They want him clued up on everything.

The mess of a war he’d been hauled out of. The history of his own family, in minutiae. The current economic climate, damned if he knew what the pissing exchange rate was these days. The immigration crisis, the state of the NHS, Putin, climate change, the energy crisis, should we stay in the E.U.?, what was his view on the U.S. presidential primaries?, should GCSEs be re-vamped?.

At every turn, they were trying to trip him up and if Fili stumbled, he’d be dragging Thorin with him. He’d been out of the world for near two and a half years and they wanted him to be able to read the opinion of the British people like it was his own handwriting.

And, who exactly were ‘the British people’? Had he ever met them? He met decent folk, he’d met cheats, he’d met fools and saints and sentinels and idealists and revolutionaries, but he has never met ‘the British people’? Was he not a British citizen himself? Isn’t he allowed to have his own thoughts? His own views? Can’t he back the causes he supports?

But they want him to go from soldier to statesman. And Thorin needs him to. And he doesn’t know if he can do that, not just yet at least.

‘Like Coriolanus.’

‘What?’, Fili blinked and looked round at her again. Her face had gone sad, her eyes gentle. He squeezed the hand he was holding, looking down curiously at the fingers he’d interlaced with his own.

‘Shakespeare?,’ she said. ‘The last of his Roman plays.’ She coughed a little and Fili blinked as a pretty blush started to stain her cheeks. ‘A general, a force to be reckoned with on the battlefield, returns to Rome and is expected to play at being senator.’

‘How’d that go for him?’

She winced. ‘Erm… not good. No, I won’t spoil it for you, but it does not end well for him.’ She shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t model yourself after him though.’ The blush deepened. ‘Maybe he was a bad comparison.’

‘Huh. Is it a good play?’

He watched as Sigrid shrugged as she nodded, her head tipping to one side slightly. Fili watched as her hair fell from behind her ear. ‘Well-acted and well-staged, it can be a really powerful play. It’s currently on stage near Covent Garden. Actually, I had hoped to catch it whilst I was down here, but trying to get tickets was murder.’

Fili huffed a small laugh, giving the hand in his another squeeze. Well, he may not want to follow in the footsteps this Coriolanus character, but he felt this plot was a little familiar.

Fili often fancied he would have made a good old fashioned sort of king. He and Thorin both. The sort where you were on a white charger at the head of your people, under a banner telling them and the enemy exactly where you were. When you nailed your colours to the mast and you put it all on the line.

All the real power these days lay with politicians. And that’s the way it should be, of course it is, power in the hands of elected representatives. But that didn’t leave much for them now did it? It was diplomacy and figure-heading. And when you’re a figurehead, people tend to forget there’s a heart and soul behind the public face.

Thorin was a cautionary tale in that respect.

All they were left with was guarded comments and a feeling of privileged guilt that flowed under everything like a sewer main.

‘Is that what your tours were?,’ Sigrid’s voice broken him out of his musing. ‘Putting it all on the line with your men?’

Well, it kinda had been, if he came right down to it.

Fili had been with the Household Cavalry since passing out of Sandhurst and, while it was the done thing for the royals to do a stint in the armed forces, Fili had worked damn hard for that commission. And heir to the throne or not, he wasn’t prepared to be kept behind stone walls while others fought the battles he ought to be in. It wasn’t in his blood.

He didn’t know what he had been expected when his boots hit the dirt, but the he felt he hadn’t been alone in that.

The Middle East was and is a damn mess. It is in chaos and for better or worse, British forces are neck deep in it. Oh, sure, they’re meant to be pulling out, but the time frame is a living, breathing and cunning creature.

He doesn’t know, don’t ask him, please, but he doesn’t know if they should be there. He was a teenage when war was declared and while he was there, he was too preoccupied to ponder the ethics and morals and if there are grander and sinister schemes in motion. He was too busy watching his back, the backs of his squad and the people around him.

‘Is that what these are then?,’ she asked when he fell quiet. Her fingertips were cool against the shadowed skin under his eyes and he felt them fluttering shut without leave. He nodded tiredly against her shoulder.

Good God, he had never been this tired.

Ever.

Even when he’d been deployed, he didn’t know what it was, but something in him just knocked him out when he needed to sleep. And being based on a forward operating base royally messes with sleep patterns. The comings and goings, the noise, the constant buzz activity around the clock coupled with stretches of utter boredom and inactivity. All underscored with a tension that wouldn’t ease.

It had followed him home, that tension. And he can’t dispel it the same way he once had. He can’t sit in silence with his some of his company and conduct equipment maintenance, or throw a ball around in the dust, or sit and talk about everything and nothing with people who just see him as another soldier. People who saw the tan lines and the terrible shave job and accepted him as one of them, even if the enlisted men gave him shit.

But there, there was sleep.

There was something about stepping through the gates of Shorabak. They shut behind you and it was like entering a termite mound; your brain was convinced that nothing from the outside world could breach the cocoon the base provided. Mortars and shells could thunder through the air but a part of his brain reasoned that, no, what he saw and what he did outside those walls couldn’t touch them.

He couldn’t afford to let it touch him.

The IEDs, the enemy and friendly fire, the civilian causalities, the causality collections, the mortaring, the lack of communication from higher up the command chain, the asking the terrible and impossible of his soldiers, the destroyed buildings, the scared and fractured communities and families. He couldn’t let them touch him, because he couldn’t touch them.

_He couldn’t. Make it. All. Stop._

He couldn’t throw his hand up and beg them, ‘We are trying to help, please, we want to help!’. He couldn't spirit every innocent soul out of danger's way. He couldn’t throw himself between girls and women emboldened by the presence of women in uniform, and the cruelty thrown their way on the heels of their bravery; be it they seek an education, a job or simply for their proclamation of ‘No’ to mean something. He couldn’t take back the commands that meant the civilian casualties, that meant the scared people whose worlds are being ripped apart around them by strangers they can’t understand. He can’t call back those soldiers of his outfit that didn’t walk back through the gates themselves. He couldn’t take his orders in hand and march into the offices of whoever the fuck was calling the shots and shove them down their throats up to the elbow. He’d done what he could with the orders and the intel but it was never all there and he couldn’t control everything, dear God had he tried, but he couldn’t.

He’d been a captain, he’d been responsible for _ten dozen_ lives. More. He’d been responsible for each of his men and everyone he and they came into contact with. The uniform made it his job, but something as little as eye-contact made it his duty.

He learned to read eyes out there. He’d read intentions, tempers and life histories in faces that had to be too young to hold them. That skill had preserved him out there more than he cared to mention, but at home, it was like having another sense. One he couldn’t quite reckon with.

He knew Thorin was doing all he could to mask his exhaustion and fear, he knew his mother was trying to hide her worry and burning fury every time any sort of media made it into Clarence House.

And he didn’t know if the journalists and reporters thought they were hiding it, but he could read the hunger in their eyes. The way their pupils dilated when they sensed blood in the water. That’s what he’d left in that room a floor and how many hours ago.

Oh it had started cordial.

There had been more press embargoes then he cared to name in place whilst he and his brother were serving, still in place to protect Kili. And they’d stuck to them. They’d been very good about it. Especially considering that during one firefight, Fili had dived being the burnt out skeleton of a vehicle for cover, only to barrel straight into Frank Gardner. But now he was home, and he was suddenly fair game again. That had been the compromise.

He’d been schooled for this. Balin and Dain both had tutored him, but Sandhurst alone had almost been a year, and he’d been in training and cadets for as long as he could remember. This had been learning on the job, if you were interning for clients that were looking to strip the meat off your bones if you gave them half a chance. He’d been up there, smiling himself into a migraine as the sweat had trickled down his neck and they’d wanted nice, shiny little sound bites about how ‘we are making a difference over there’ and ‘it was all going smoothly’.

He’d shipped out and he’d done the job that was in front of him, they all had, and some of them had died doing it. There’s been no honour or glory to this. He’s not saying soldiers go for it or expect it, but he could see why so many don’t identify as heroes. He knows he doesn’t. They were out there peace keeping, if that could be believed. They’d been putting things in motion for the local people, supporting the local powers. Training up the local forces as troops were being extracted.

But it hadn’t been easy for anyone out there, and it churned his blood to know resources were being spent on keeping him as safe as possible. If he could have had it his way, he’d have rerouted the resources on him to his brother’s detail.

‘Your brother’s still out there, isn’t he?’ Sigrid’s voice was gentle above him and he rubbed his cheek into her knee as he nodded.

‘Yes. Air Force, 31st Squadron.’

‘Will he be shipping home soon?’

Fili hadn’t realised he’d stiffen until her fingers resumed idly carding through his hair. He sighed and let his eyes slide closed.

Kili really ought to have been home before him. Months ago. After the incident.

It had been so stupid a fuck up. All the effort, all the resources, all the fucking man hours and it had been for nothing. All on the whims of a power-chasing, uncaring, narcissistic monster of a man, trying to slime his way up Capitol Hill.

‘He was hurt.’ It wasn’t a question, Fili was half sure she could read the answer through her fingertips.

‘There was an attack,’ Fili muttered and he rolled onto his back to look up at her, and fought back bile. ‘He was flown to Germany and they operated there.’

They’d taken every precaution possible. Trying to keep the brothers in different locations, have their tours overlapping rather than running the same to the calendar. Even changed their names from the family ‘Durin’; Fili was ‘Smith’, Kili was ‘Archer’, the same way Thorin had been ‘Hooper’.

And it had been for nothing.

Kili wasn’t meant be in Shorabak for long. He’d been flying in a medical evac, his Chinook touching the down in the late morning. It was a mix of British and American troops and an Afghan soldier.

It was the run up to an election year, so their esteemed visitor did what any self-serving GOP candidate would do as the stretchers were being unloaded; he muscled in for photo opportunities.

The choker royal household had put on the media with regards to its' two sons had been observed and respected by all the media broadcasters. But apparently, a photo with the location and date hashtagged and with the two princes head-butting each other in the background on Twitter is all it takes.

Their intel was horrified by how fast it had happened. There hadn’t been any indication of insurgents around Shorabak for months. The smallest of mercies was that this didn’t appear to be a long standing plan, only prompted by the chance intel of the Twitter photo and some opportunistic hot heads. Official intel hadn’t been directly compromised, just devastatingly undermined by an idiot with his own agenda who dove for cover the second the gates were breech.

They’d been fast, taking out three personnel on the gate before scaling over them.

It had been a horrible fight. Dusk had been creeping in and the air was heavy enough with dew to wade through, the cold clinging to your legs and the light fading. They’d used the shadows, only their voices and gunfire reaching them. Two men had hit the ground with little more warning than the crack and flash of muzzle fire. Those in the open ground, beside the landing pad, had been a mix of officers and enlisted men, squadrons and sections. If they'd had time to stop and look at one another, they'd each had been hard pushed to find someone they knew and trusted to have their back in a tight corner. There'd been no command structure. And none of them had been more heavily armed than a Browning or a Glock.

They’d taken cover as the alarm was raised, trying to lay down as sparing a covering fire as they could afford, voices shouting at cross purposes and the sound of thundering boots approached but never seemed to get any closer.

And that's where Fili had been when one of the cracks in the air and its’ accompanying little exploding star happened one end of the square and his brother had screamed and fallen into the dust at the other.

He hadn’t been able to move.

He’d frozen, a Molotov cocktail of terror and fury coursing through his blood. He couldn’t move. The snarl of gun fire in the air pinning him down and the Sergeant besides him had grabbed him when he’d screamed his brother’s name.

Fili wasn’t old enough to remember when his father died and certainly not old enough to understand. He has vague, watercolour memories of his father. He remembers a laugh like amicable thunder and a moustache that tickled. He remembers the open sky and the feeling of flying, of feeling like he stood on the shoulders of a god. He has his father’s colouring; burnished gold alongside the typical Durin coal black. He remembers his greatest friend leaving with promises to be home soon. He remembers a day when every face in Clarence House was grey and every eye was glassy. He remembers his mother, stomach swollen which Fili’s little brother or sister, in a rage that terrifies him to this day. He remembers tears and screaming and a fury that shook walls. He remembers Uncle Thorin begging, pleading with Dis to calm down, lest she hurt herself or the baby. He remembers crying into Uncle Thorin’s shoulder at the funeral, not understanding why. Why was Mummy so upset? Daddy said he was coming home, why isn’t he home?

The ‘whys’ had changed a little over the years, but they were still there. Why had he been in the advancing convoy? Why hadn’t the American pilots received the briefing they needed? Why hadn’t they been pulled up and informed? Why had the A-10 Thunderbolt II opened fire on the two British FV510 Warriors? Why did his father have to be in the second one?

And in that moment, as his heart lodged itself between his ribs, the part of his brain not screaming wondered ‘well here’s another question – why does my baby brother have to die for that son of a bitch’s photo op?’.

Reinforcements had come, but Fili doesn’t remember the mechanics of how it finished. He just remembers taking frantic breaths, the air heavy with the taste of dust, blood and propellant, as he flew to his brother’s side.

Fili hadn’t realised tears had rolled out from under his eyelids until he felt fingertips on his cheeks again. There was no ugly, ragged breathing accompanying the tears, nor were his teeth gritted fit to crack. There wasn’t the sound of his own blood in his ears for a change, just the gentle rush of his breathing and hers. He kept his eyes closed, because if he opened them, he’d have to acknowledge what was happening, and he’d rather not have to deal with that at the moment. One revelation at a time please.

‘How come Kili didn’t come home?’

Kili’d been lucky. They’d been so damn lucky.

And it had been a mixed blessing at that.

‘Why mixed?’

Of all the locations for his brother to take an M43 to the inner thigh, slicing the femoral artery, he did so in a military camp with a fully operational and staffed hospital.

Well, Kili had been ordered home. The sod wouldn’t go. As soon as he recovered from further surgery in Germany and been checked out, he’d all but stowed away on the next transporter. He’d been kind enough to send ahead word to his commander, but the stunt left a few small aneurysms in its wake. Within 12 hours of being checked out, thankfully with medical advice, he was back in Afghan airspace.

Fili could hear the confusion in the incredulous voice above him. ‘Why, on earth, did he do that?’

Well, there comes the mixing of the aforementioned blessings.

Kili had fallen in love.

Fili felt the sudden intake of breath and the fingers in his hair tightened ever so slightly.

‘I’m terribly sorry, can you repeat that please?’

No, she’d hear him right. His little brother had fallen in love. To the extent that he’d flown back into an active warzone.

‘See, the media reported Kili being wounded and flown out, but this is new… Really?’

Yes, really. There’d been one hell of a gag order on that, on top of everything else.

‘Who is she then? Wait, sorry I’m assuming. Who are they then?’

Fili couldn’t help but smile warmly up at her. They’re a woman.

‘Is she a nurse? Was it a hospital bedside romance?’ Her smile is devious and he could almost see the scripting, casting and staging the romantic drama in her head.

No, not a nurse.

‘Another pilot? A soldier? Another role in the forces?’

Oh she had another role alright. She’s an interpreter. A local interpreter.

‘….Oh.’

Indeed. Oh.

Whatever the possible morale boost, or however the media would undoubtedly make the relationship about anything other the two people in it, was going to be flavoured by some many outside voices.

But to Fili, theirs is a love coloured but darkness and blood.

Fili had thrown himself down at his brother’s side and he could see, in the poor light, the colour already leeching from his face. He wasn’t where he’d fallen Fili realised, about 3 hours later as the shock was wearing off. Kili had fallen with the loading bay of the Chinook behind him. When he reached him, he was sheltered behind the belly of the craft, his heels having dug furrows into the dirt.

She’d dragged him there. He’d hit the ground in a spray of arterial blood and she’d broken cover to drag him back. Kili hands had been scrabbling blindly; one hands curled around her arm, the other seeking out Fili. She had one hand clamped over the meat of his thigh but the blood was still streaming determined between her fingers into the thirsty sand. It had painted a trail in the sand, up the side of the craft and in a livid slash across her face and hijab.

She’d fought Kili’s hand off her even as his fingers twisted in her sleeve. Her free fingers ripped at the buttons of her shirt and while Fili choked out sobbing breaths and gripped his brother’s hand. He distinctly remembers looking up at the woman as she worked. Her expression had been taut but it was the steadiest thing in Fili’s world for those few seconds, her sea glass eyes had been wide and over bright in her penny brown face. For half a second, she’d just looked at him, hard. For half a second.

Kili'd let out a mangle scream.

Fili had floundered and gasped and shook and sobbed into his brother’s fist while she had wadded up her shirt and pressed it to his leg, winding her belt around it.

‘Wait, wait… She used her shirt?’

Ah, she’d caught that too.

Yes, she’d used her shirt. Her commander, well, he’d hit the roof

They’d hauled Kili onto a stretcher and neither Fili nor the woman had budged. They’d run alongside, Fili still with a grip on his brother’s hand and her still pressing her weight onto his leg. Fili didn’t remember being wrestled off by an orderly but the lad was there when he felt cold air on his face again.

The commander or community elder or whoever the hell the guy was, he and small troop of Afghan soldiers had accompanied the injured soldier to Shorabak, had been screaming at her. Fili couldn’t tell what he was saying, he’d had little head for languages when calm controlled voices were being used, but anyone could read the mood.

The man was furious. At her, at the fact she’d gotten involved, at the fact she’d bared skin to save a man’s life, Fili didn’t know. And he didn’t know what the man intended to do, but tensions were high, there was blood in the air and there were weapons within reach now.

Fili had staggered half way to them, with no clue of what he planned to do or say in his head, only that it needed to stop, when another man slipped between the commander and the woman. He dropped a DMP jacket around her shoulders and stared down the commander, muttering between thin lips.

Fili didn’t hear what was said. When he came out of post-op, where a kind nurse had taken him to wash the blood of himself, the commander and his people were gone, but the two young officers were still there.

Tauriel. He learned her name was Tauriel. Mainly from his brother’s drugged murmurings as they transferred him from post onto a transporter to Germany. He went and found her after the tail lights had disappeared into the pre-dawn sky. She and Legolas, the man who’d stared down his commander and father for his surrogate sister, had been billeted with the officers.

She didn’t speak much. She’d answered his questions; How was she? How did she meet Kili? What the ever loving fuck happened last night? But he could tell she was a little wary of him, of everyone, who wasn’t Legolas. He didn’t see much of her around camp; once command had learned of the two new, local and more lingual than any one mind had any right to be, personnel on the camp roster, the two disappeared out on patrols into nearby settlements almost daily.

When Kili had snuck back onto base, he saw a lot more of her. Where Kili went, so apparently went her nation. In the mess, around camp, in the thrown together gym. Fili remembered finding them on the roof of the stores one night, star gazing of all things.

Kili had always had his face turned to the sky, ever since he was tiny. He went into the RAF only because the UK doesn’t have an active astronaut recruitment programme and that sort of thing required PhD level smarts. Kili’s head wasn’t bad, his heart had just always been better.

Fili remembered that night; they’d been lying on the corrugated roof under a stolen blanket and he’d been leaning against the wall below them, a heel digging into the brickwork. Kili was talking a mile a minute and Fili just knew that his brother would be outlining constellations, hands waving erratically. Every now and again he could hear Tauriel’s voice, low and unhurried, the spaces between words sometimes slipping away under the current of her speech. Fili remembers the soft smile he had while he eavesdropped on the pair. And he remembers it slipping away without his leave as his head thunked back against the brickwork and he stared off into the middle distance, concentrating very, very hard on how he wasn’t lonely and how he wasn't so very tired of being so.

Kili was still out there now. He still wasn’t flying but he was trying for diplomacy. He was trying to temper the situation in Syria with the RAF. That, at least, Fili didn’t envy of his brother.

But he was tired of being lonely.

He was so tired.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter gives you a little insight into my own moral compass and where I draw my ethics from.
> 
> I steer by two of my principled stars for this fic: Commandor Sam Vimes of the Ank-Morepork City Watch and Captain Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce of the 4077th M*A*S*H.  
> \- The 'War isn't Hell' passage if from the M*A*S*H episode 'The General's Practitioner'.  
> \- ‘Never met the British people’ - Sam Vimes on the eve of People's Republic of Treacle Mine Road, Night Watch.  
> \- ‘Done the job that was in front of him’ – I’m expecting any moment for the ghost of Terry Pratchett to arise and slap me silly. Terry makes a point of drawing the difference between soldiers and police offices. Between servants of the state and servants of the law. But the sentiment has lodged somewhere sticking in me. 
> 
> And the 'didn’t align with what I believe a soldier should be' was lifted out of episode 1 of The Night Manager.
> 
> Thorin's constitutional fall out is guided by two fics; Yahtzee's  Anarchy in the UK  and FayJay's [ The Student Prince ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/91885/chapters/125138). The Student Prince also lent to the ‘Good old fashioned sort of king’ bit. These two fics are truely fantastic modern royalty AUs. I did my best not to plagiarise, but I can quote chunks of The Student Prince, it is such a good fic and is very dear to my heart. It's set in my Uni town of St Andrews.
> 
> They aren’t Tolkien fandom fics; Anarchy is X-Men: First Class and Student Prince is Merlin, and if you love these fandoms or even if you’ve never touched them, go read them. 
> 
> Now. Now now now. Stop reading this rubbish and go.
> 
> In Brunei, homosexuality still carries the death sentence.
> 
> Coriolanus - I am a slut for Shakespeare, and the fic title is a line from Act 1, Scene 4.
> 
> Frank Gardner, OBE, is a British journalist and correspondent. He is currently the BBC's Security Correspondent. He's been in and out of war zones for years.
> 
> Hooper - working with oak and barrels. Fight me.
> 
> I had Vili as an army officer killed in the line of duty in the First Gulf War. Two Warriors were destroyed during the First Gulf War, with nine soldiers killed, in a friendly fire incident when a American A-10 Thunderbolt II launched on two Warriors. [ Operation Granby ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Granby), executed by the British Army, resulted in 47 casualties, 9 of which as a result of friendly fire.


	7. 2:49 pm

Sigrid blinked down at him.

She swiped the pad of her thumb over the apple of his cheek as he nestled his head further into her lap. She wasn’t quite sure when his noises of ‘yes-I’m-listening’ had morphed into wheezy little snores.

It had been somewhere between Tilda, her being the amiable child she had been, playing surrogate to service personnel who had lost their children in one way or another, and occasional retreats out to Beorn’s farm and stables.

He’d been flagging, but he had be talking for, well, hours. They’d been in here for, Sigrid checked her watch, twisting her hand away from his hair for a moment, close to 4 hours now. She really would have thought there’d be more of a ruckus outside at this stage.     

He’d gone quiet after he’d talked about his brother and she let him.

He’d had something of a lightbulb moment. She highly doubted he’d ever admitted to himself, let alone voiced it aloud.

He’d asked her to talk after that. About COMMS Link, what she’d done with them, what support they offered, how it had helped people, what her life at Uni had been like, how she found it as the eldest sibling, anything.  

She told him about Tilda and Bain, about how there’d never really been anything more vicious than gentle bickering between the three of them because from the very beginning it had been painfully clear it had been them against the rest of the world. About growing up in a little village in Lincolnshire, where there'd been nothing to do but grow up. She told him about Uni; about her course and her friends and the societies she'd gotten entangled in. How she’d run into Gandalf and Galadriel and how counsellor and psychiatric training has taken what was occasional, unscheduled tea-and-talk-it-out sessions to being an organised core group of people looking to help others.

She’d talked about the workshops, the retreats, the letters she’d written to MPs. The summer weekends spent in the countryside with their people, at stables and farmsteads. They did everything with their people. Sigrid had gone to dog therapy and training sessions with Madril. Choir with Hilda-Bianca, before it was agreed, yeah, Tilda’d probably be a better choice, seeing as she could actually carry a tune without needing a bucket. She and Percy have filled out job applications side by side. She’s been there for Irolas throughout his physical therapy, when he could barely put one foot in front of the other, and now the crazy fool was expecting her to go running with him. She’d sat in silent support as Baranor called his ex-wife to arrange visits to see their son. She’d helped Corwin organise his brother’s funeral.

They were her people. They were her family.

And she’d never even put on the uniform.

Bain was well into his training with the RAMC, as a Combat Medical Technician. Tilda was 17 with the world at her feet. She was driving her tutors mad, flicking through the UCAS catalogue as if it was a year old magazine in a dentist’s waiting room. Da was gardening now. He’d been contracted for landscaping work and as spring had thawed out and it got drier, his work load was picking up more and more.  

She’d told him about her family, like he’d told her about his. OK, hers was a little more sprawling and mismatched, but by the sounds of it, it was just as vibrant as his.

He was sleeping now. She’d kept up her litany until his breathing had evened out and the flickering of his eye lids indicated he was well under. He looked like he needed it.

She was able to look over him with a critical eye now he was oblivious to it. He’d lost weight rapidly. Everyone coming back off tour came back a little leaner, but the skin of his cheeks not hidden under the thatch of his beard was taut across his cheekbones and she could feel with her fingertips that his knuckles stood a little prouder than they ought to.

Some poor dogged make-up artist had tried to mask shadows under his eyes for the interview. The results may have passed mustered this morning, but now the foundation on his skin resembled marble cake.

And he’d nodded off in the middle of the day, in front of a stranger.

So, he’s not been eating and he’s not been sleeping. He wasn’t the first.

Would he be able to get help? Could the monarchy take it at the moment? The scandal? The king out as gay and the heir in a state of shell-shock?

Because that’s how’d the media would paint it; they’d turn them into a circus act.

Sigrid had no doubt that his family would support him no matter what. From what she’d seen of Clarence House, the staff loved them. They’d rally round.

And Sigrid had a vague memory of a news report from around the time Kili’s A-Level results had come out. Some snotty academic made a comment on the morning news and by noon, there’d been an official and cutting statement released by Her Royal Highness. Something about stuffing the mind in a bid to keep your place in the world. And her boy was always moving.

Sigrid had never before or since felt protective pride and threat coming off a piece of print, but she really wish she knew how to do that.

His family and his people would support him, she mused. He’d need someone to speak to. Someone who’d need to come here. Maybe she could recommend Galadriel.

She looked down at him again as he turned slightly, his beard scuffing on the fabric of her skirt. He sighed and she could feel the warmth of his breath on her knee. The sun had started to inch its way across the French doors at the other end of the parlour and the light was catching the gold in his hair. Sigrid carded her fingers through his fringe absentmindedly, watching the fall of it as it settled back over his eyes. Reaching behind, Sigrid hooked the woollen throw off the back of the sofa that had become their little stronghold. She gave a flick of her wrist and the throw snapped out before settling over Fili, covering him up to his chest. He murmured slightly as she fidgeted with the fringing, shuffling and pressed the crown of his firmly into her belly. Mentally, she insisted that the fluttering in her stomach was down to the tickling. She laced her free hand through his again, settling them together on his chest and giving a squeeze when he sighed again and tugged lightly.

Sigrid tilted her head against edge of the back of the sofa, closed her eyes, stroked her thumb over the rough knuckles she could reach, and waited.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have many many feels regarding the Races of Men of Middle Earth. I went through a wiki page of non book canon Men and picked out who took my fancy for the roster of COMMS Link's people.


	8. 4:43 pm

She’d been ready when the door burst open.

The scratch of the key in the lock had her snapping awake and by the time the member of security from earlier was through the door, she had her hands up over her head. He didn’t have a weapon trained on her but Sigrid half expected he was trying to kill her with the force of his gaze. Until he noticed the golden head in her lap and the fury bled to fear.

‘What have you done to him!?’

Fili jack-knifed up out of her lap with a bitten off yelp, nearly cracking her in the face as he flailed. Sigrid made a grab for him but she only slowed his inelegant descent to the carpet.

‘Nothing,’ Sigrid said reproachfully, making sure to make eye contact with the man. ‘I just let him sleep.’

She got the impression if she didn’t have Fili between her and the hulk of a man, there would be a barrel trained on her. She could see the man’s hand twitching.

‘Dwalin? Have you found him?!’

That was a new voice. Sigrid could just see around the man when he turned at the sound of, assumedly, his name. The man who appeared around the door was tiny but lightning quick when he flew across the room, dropping to his knees besides Fili and taking his face in his hands.

‘Fili? Are you alright dear lad?’

‘I’m fine,’ Fili mumbled, ineffectively batting at the hands on his cheeks. ‘I’m fine. Dwalin, for the love of God, stop seething at her.’ Fili cast tired eyes up at her with an apologetic smile from between small and insistent palms. ‘She’s done nothing to hurt me.'

‘You were in here!’ Dwalin snapped, pointing a rigid finger at Sigrid. ‘You were in here when we first swept the house!’ 

‘Dwalin!’, the small man snapped and twisted to glare up at him.

Sigrid was suddenly struck by something she’d read somewhere, something about recorded cases of wolverines standing up to polar bears and winning.  

‘Dwalin,’ he said again, calmer now. ‘Go and let Thorin and Dis know he’s in here.’ Sigrid saw Fili’s eyes widen and he tried to push himself of the floor, but small hands clamped onto his shoulders and held him in place. ‘I’ll stay here with them.’ Dwalin looked like he wanted to argue but was stared down by sharp eyes. He turned and headed back out the door, muttering darkly and the newcomer turned his attention back to Fili and subsequently to Sigrid. He smiled at her, but it didn’t make a dent in the guarded look in his eyes. ‘Hello my dear,’ he said, voice clear but clipped. ‘And who might you be?’

‘I’m Sigrid-‘

‘She’s fine Bilbo,’ Fili cut in wearily, drawing the man’s attention again. ‘She’s fine.’ Fili tried to push himself up again but only managed to rearrange himself on the carpet. He leant back against the skirt of the sofa, his arm pressed against the side of Sigrid’s calf and Bilbo’s hands hovering not far away. ‘She’s not press.’

Sigrid tried not to stare.

She wasn’t successful.

So that was Bilbo.

He seemed to catch her slightly too knowing eyes and Sigrid could almost see the hackles going up. ‘Fili?’

‘I told her.’ Sigrid dropped her eyes as the colour sapped from Bilbo’s face and knuckles. Fili winced and eased Bilbo’s hand off his arm. ‘I told her a lot.’

‘Fili,’ Bilbo’s voice was almost strangled.

‘She’s not press Bilbo. She won’t tell.’ Sigrid nodded solemnly when Bilbo pinned her with a sharp gaze again.

‘How can you know that?’

Sigrid didn’t have time to feel hurt before Fili let out a dark chuckle. ‘She called me ‘Your Majesty’.’ His head lolled onto her knee as he looked up at her. ‘The proper address, for me, is ‘Your Highness’. Even when they’re being underhanded, they don’t get that wrong.’

Sigrid grimaced, screwing her eyes tight and shook her head slightly. Oh she’d swatted up on etiquette and everything. But had kinda flown out the window about the same time Fili had flown into the room.

Prince Fili.

Oh yeah… Forgotten that.

Bilbo sighed heavily, his head dropping forward and the mop of brown gold curls hiding his eyes. ‘So you _talked_ to her.’

Fili nodded mutely, dragging a hand over his eyes and down his face. ‘Yes,’ he said letting his hand drop into his lap. ‘Yes I talked to _her_.’

‘Fili, when we suggested you speak to someone…’ Bilbo groaned, in turn rubbing at his eyes. Sigrid looked closer and he too was sporting shadows under his eyes. ‘I’m sorry my dear,’ Bilbo looked up at Sigrid and his smile had gone a little brittle. ‘I didn’t mean to speak of you as if you’re not here. And,’ here he cast a quick look at Fili that clearly said ‘don’t argue with me here’, ‘I must ask that you, umm, sign a nondisclosure agreement before you leave here.’

Sigrid was nodding before Bilbo had finished speaking. ‘Of course.’

‘She won’t talk,’ Fili muttered against her shin. ‘Bilbo, Sigrid,’ he looked up her again with tired eyes, ‘she knows what she’s doing.’ There was a hand fluttering against her knee and she reached forward and took it. ‘She was here to talk to Mum.’ Fili laced their fingers together once again and lent his cheek against the back of her hand. Sigrid tried to ignore Bilbo’s astounded eyes and the flush creeping up her neck. She focused shyly on Fili’s face and he just gazed back at her steadily, a soft and still sleepy smile spreading across his face like a tide. Sigrid couldn’t help but mirror it.

He’d opened up to her. And she got the impression he didn’t want to close off anytime soon.

‘How long?’ Bilbo voice was almost a growl. Sigrid snapped her attention back to Bilbo and the glare that Dwalin had levelled at her paled in comparison to the one she was now subjected to. He was still crouched on the floor in front of Fili and Sigrid thought, for a mad second, that he was going to lunge.

‘What time is it now?’ Fili murmured.

Bilbo glanced down at his watch. ‘4:55, why?’

‘Then very nearly 6 hours.’

Bilbo deflated noticeably and looked incredulously between the two of them. ‘You only met today?’

Sigrid nodded mutely as Fili huffed what sounded like a laugh through his nose. Bilbo just pinched the bridge of his nose and groaned, his disbelieving muttering of ‘ _Durins!_ ’ just audible over the sound of approaching feet.

‘Like you can judge,’ Fili grit out as he finally found the strength to make the climb from the carpet to the sofa seat. ‘Speaking of,’ Fili turned to Sigrid, he was still smiling but fear had crept in around the eyes. ‘Ready for that meeting now?’

Sigrid only had time to squeeze his hand reassuringly before the door flew open yet again.

And this time the ones stepping over the threshold were His Royal Highness, Thorin the Second, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas, Defender of the Faith, and his sister, Her Royal Highness, The Princess Dis, Princess Royal, Duchess of Edinburgh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bilbo has experienced first hand the power of the Durin 'love-at-first-contact' and the tenacity that comes with it.


	9. 6:38 pm

Her father picked up halfway through the second ring.

‘Sigrid? Sigrid is that you?’

‘Hello Da, I-’

‘Romeo Uniform?’

Sigrid grinned through her sigh, a shaky little laugh rattling the rotary phone’s receiver. Sigrid placed a trembling hand over her eyes and her knees finally buckled under her, dropping her down with a whump.

‘Sigrid!?’

‘Oscar Kilo Da. Oscar Kilo.’

‘OK, right.’ Sigrid sat and listened to the sound of her father calming down at the other end of the line. Admittedly, Sigrid didn’t know of any other families who had codes to use over the phone to establish if they were unharmed, but it was a quirk of her father’s she couldn’t begrudge.

And she really ought to have called home about 6 hours ago.

Bard informed her as such, the worry still in his voice. ‘And why don’t I recognise this number?’

‘Because I’m ringing from Clarence House.’

‘You’re still there?!’, Sigrid winced.

‘Yes Da.’

‘Why on Earth are you still there?’

Sigrid looked around the room she’d been left it and could feel the hysteria bubbling up in her chest.

How can she put this?

Well, King Thorin and Princess Dis had arrived and had been all but vibrating with stress and worry. Clarence House had been in a state of high alert for most of the day, Channel 4 had been hustled off the premises and Dwalin and his team had been systematically tearing the estate apart. Apparently, there’d been a slight misunderstanding when Dwalin had first come out if the parlour room after that first check, turned to his second and said ‘not in there’, and the man had taken that as ‘room empty’ and locked it after him. Hence the 6 hours of not so solitary confinement.

Dis had made a beeline for her son the moment she’d seen him. She’d pulled Fili into a tight hug, a hand coming to cradle the back of his head. Fili had just closed his eyes and leant against her smaller form. Thorin’d hovered nearby for a second, before some invisible que had him wrapping his arms both of them. The only sound in the room had been Fili’s uneven breathing and the sweep of Thorin’s broad palm on this nephew’s back.

Sigrid hadn’t known where to put her face and had ended up sharing uncertain looks with Bilbo, until he’d been tugged into the circle of arms by the King. Then she’d just had to wait; at the same desperate to go on being invisible and hoping someone sees she’s still here. She’d twisted her fingers into the panels of her skirt and tried not to hear the murmured conversation happening in the middle of the room. The royal family, and Sigrid has to fight down the terrified giggles once more, had broken apart with soft looks and quiet words. There hadn’t been anything for Sigrid to hide behind when Dis and Thorin had finally looked her way.

She doesn’t quite remember what happened but she’s got the visual memory of Princess Dis coming at her with a slightly guarded smile and arms open. There had been talking. Well, Sigrid remembered the dull roar of words underpinned by a truly impressive internalised panic.

Oh good lord, what was being assumed? How this must look? Well, she doesn’t know, but she doesn’t want to look too closely.

She may have spoken? Possibly? Her jaw hurt, but that may have been down to her gritting her teeth. She thinks Fili had done a lot of the talking, and she had the ghost memory of his hand in hers.

She hadn’t expected that to be honest. She’d first offered him her hand early on because he looked like he would fly apart if he didn’t anchor himself some how. Since that moment on the sofa, he’d only broken contact in order to shift closer, even after his arse had hit the carpet. Now he had permission to touch, he really, really didn’t seem happy to let go.

But here she was, over an hour later. She was alive. They hadn’t hauled her off to the Tower of London to be beheaded or called for MI5 or 6 or Torchwood or whoever was available to black bag her and disappear her into the night. Dis and Thorin had both spoken to her, there may have been bobbing on her part. There’d been thanks, gruff but heartfelt from Thorin and all-encompassing from Dis, belying the weary and protective light in her eyes.

Sigrid had eventually been separated from the royal group; Dis prying Fili away from Sigrid’s side to walk him back to, his rooms presumably. Thorin followed them out, putting a hand on Fili’s shoulder when he tried to walk out of the room with his head on backwards in order to keep Sigrid in sight.

Sigrid had been spirited from the room by Bilbo. The small man had taken hold of her elbow and not quite marched her down the corridor. While she felt she was being led to her doom, a small bit of her brain reasoned she was possibly in the best hands. If there was anyone else in the building who could relate to her situation of inadvertently knowing way more than is probably good for them, it’s the prim little man who’d been one half of mutually pinning romance and had thrown his lot, and his heart, in with the royal family. Bilbo had hustled her into Balin’s office and deposited her in front of the Chief of Staff and proceeding to flit from filing cabinet to scanner and back.

Balin, in turn, had been kind enough to escort her back up the corridor to the toilet. Hey, 6 hours, a pot of tea and a heck of a lot of stress.

She came back to a document printed and ready for her signing and Bilbo gone. A cheery little piece that made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that if she takes anything to the press, they would bury her. She’d made a modest show of reading it, twice, and signed.

She’d just placed the pen down onto the desk again when Bofur’s face appeared around the door jamb, in a strange deja vu that she’s seeing from the other side. He’d grinned brightly at her and asked Balin if they were all done here so he could show the young lady up to her room. Sigrid was certain Balin would never do anything as gauche as show when he was startled, but Sigrid didn’t have any such training and had nearly given herself whiplash staring between the two.

So, turned out that Fili had managed to form words and apparently had told his mother everything.

Everything.

Him bolting, him hiding, him having a full blown episode, him talking and her listening.

And now his mother, and subsequently his uncle and now his uncle’s partner, wanted to hear everything about her. So Bombur was cooking up a storm in the kitchen as they spoke, because the two them had clear missed lunch and he was astounded they’d not been faint when they’d been found.

This had Balin nudging a plate of biscuits at her from across the table. He struck Sigrid as the type of grandfatherly figure who always had toffees on his person.

But no, the young lady hasn’t eaten, and there’s still the matter of the appointment she actually came here to for, which felt like a lifetime ago to Sigrid. So the plan is, and Dis had flagged Bofur down in the corridor to relay the message, for the young lady to stay the night and for the meeting to be rescheduled for tomorrow, about the same time. Would that be alright for her? They could cover expenses if she needed to change or re-book travel arrangements.

Sigrid had been a little too preoccupied to let them know she had an open-return.

But staying overnight? In Clarence House?

Oh yes, there were a number of guest bedrooms and there is one that Dis was sure would suit.

She didn’t have anything with her.

Not to worry, the en-suites would be stocked, and if she needed anything else, she need only ask. Oh, and not to worry about clothing. There was a small store of pyjamas and the like in the house and if she left her clothes outside her door this evening, it would be no bother to have them laundered for the next day.

Dressing for dinner?

She was perfectly fine like that dear. It’s not Downton Abbey every night.

She’d blushed as Bofur had chuckled at her embarrassment and Balin twinkled kindly. Honestly though, at a push Fili would remember to change his shirt. But she wasn’t to expect much more of the lad.

And in the wake of hearing the Chief of Staff talk about the heir to the throne like he was a wayward school boy, Bofur offered his elbow for her to hold herself up on as he lead the way back into the house and up the wide sweeping staircase. He’d shown her to a corridor, slightly off the main hallway, carpeted and wallpapered in a dark hunter green. The bedroom off it was larger than anyone she’d ever slept in but not so big she’d get lost trying to navigate from the wardrobe to the bed.

She’d dropped her messenger bag at the foot of the bed once she was done turning on the spot. The room mirrored the hallway outside; deep greens and browns, forest tones, but with wide windows overlooking the House’s gardens to the back, the early evening light still valiantly streaming in even as the sun was dipping below the tree line. She’d spotted the old fashioned rotary phone by the bed and asked if it would be alright for her to use, just to call home. Bofur smiled, saying actually they’d be grateful if she did, rather than use her mobile. He fished out a little card from under the base with instructions on how to call out and checked his watch. He left her to call home and freshen up if she needed, he’d be back with night things for her and to escort her to the dining room in for 7:30pm.

And that’s why on Earth she’s still here, Da. That’s why.

Bard was silent on the other end of the line for a good few seconds. ‘Sigrid?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sweetheart?’

‘What?’

‘Are you basically telling me that you had a several hour long counselling and therapy session with the Prince of Wales?’

Sigrid pitched sideways on the bed and muffled a tortured scream into the comforter.

‘I’ll take that as a ‘Yes Da’.’

Sigrid whimpered. ‘Something just went ‘click’ in my brain Da. I just saw a veteran who needed help. I just spoke with him and talked him through a few things and, and… Oh God, I don’t know. I didn’t offer any real help, I just listened.’

‘Sigrid,’ her father said softly. ‘When you help someone, there is never any ‘just’ about it. I’ve seen that.

‘Da-’

‘I’m serious Sigrid. I’ve seen you turn lives around. I’ve been there.’

‘Da…,’ Sigrid could hear her own voice getting thick.    

There was a gentle knock on the door and on the other side of it, Bofur trilled her name in a sing-song voice.

‘That’s my guide, hang on,’ she pressed the receiver into her shoulder and called ‘Come in!’

Bofur sidled in with his arms full of what looked like mainly white items of a cottony and fleecy persuasion, dumping the pile on the bottom corner of the bed. ‘I need to go Da, I’m,’ she swallowed, ‘I’m off to have dinner with the King, the Princess Royal, and the Prince of Wales.’

‘Have fun.’

‘If you don’t hear from me, assume I’ve been incarcerated in the Tower, or I have finally succumbed to the stress of it all.’

‘Drama queen. You’ll fit right in.’

‘Shut up.’

‘I’m relaying this all to Tilda just so you know.’

‘Don’t you dare!’ Sigrid snarled. ‘No. Da, don’t. Don’t.’

‘Speak soon. Charlie Uniform.’

‘Lima Tango. Da-’

‘Bye!’

‘Da-’, Sigrid bit off a curse and dropped the receiver back onto the body of the phone before dropping her head into her hands and gripping her own hair.

‘You alright there lass?’

Sigrid just moaned and rubbed her forehead.

‘You’ll be fine. Come on,’ Bofur held out his arm to her again. ‘You’ve had a long day and you deserve to try of Bombur’s Beef Wellington.’

Sigrid looked up at him balefully through her fingers, before sighing and pushing herself off of the bed.

‘Fine, fine. You led me into this lion’s den, you may as well have a ringside seat.’

Bofur barked a laugh. ‘No such luck. But know that I’ll not be far away and I’ll listen to your dying screams with fondness.’

Grumbling, Sigrid took his arm once more and headed out into the hall, trying very hard not to tighten her grip as they went. ‘Come on,’ he said just outside the small dining room. He held the door open for her and gave her an encouraging smile. ‘Time for you to have your first dinner with the future in-laws.’

And in the time it took for the blood to drain from her face, the door had opened and shut again behind her.  

Four heads turned to face her. There wasn’t a sound in the room, not a breath of air. Sigrid was dimly aware of the door handle burrowing into her spine.   

Then Fili rose from his seat, a small and hopeful smile blossoming across his face like a morning glory.

May be she could do this.

At least for the next 24 hours or so.

She could do this.


	10. Epilogue - 10:24am

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to dedicate this final chapter to two people present here on AO3.  
> To whilewewereyetsinners, who I am sure has left comments on every chapter of this story, and I have thought about her and her husband in the writing of this final chapter. Wish so much love to you and yours.  
> And to MagicMarker, who is just a gem of a human being in my eyes. I tried, very faultering, to be of support recently to her and in all honestly I just felt I was howling into the abyss. She imparted a little wisdom to me, which I have Fili repeating in this chapter. She has been so kind and supportive over the last few months as I've tried to find work, and when I try and return the favour, when she is much more deserving of it, she is still the one reasuring me.

She could do this.

She could so do this. She had this under total control. All she needed to do was head back down stairs, head into the Princess Royal’s parlour, sit down and answers some questions. Like she’d done before.

She could do this.

Nope.

Nope. She wanted back under that duvet.

Sigrid cast a longing look at the butter yellow comforter on the half tester bed. There was a gentle tapping on the bedroom’s door before she could commit to toeing off her shoes and burrowing her way to safety.

‘Sigrid!’ Bofur trilled from outside, ‘Come on my lamb. It’s nearly showtime.’

Sigrid made sure the groan-bordering-on-shriek was loud enough to be heard through the door and glared balefully into the man’s stupid chuckling face when she wrenched the door open.

‘I hate you.’

‘Now is that anyway way to talk to your friend and escort on this perilous venture?’

‘I hate you and I hate your face.’

Bofur patted her hand as she slipped it through his elbow. ‘That’s more like it. Come on my dear.’

They headed off down the corridor towards the main staircase. He kept a reassuring hand on hers as the descended, her rhythmically thunking her head off his shoulder.

‘Easy,’ he murmured. ‘Anyone would think you were worried.’ She glared at him again as he smirked. ‘You’ve got this. You done this before.’

‘It’s different this time,’ Sigrid muttered petulantly into the wool of his blazer. ‘Is this ever going to get less terrifying?’

Her head rose and fell with his shrug. ‘Eh,’ he said, ‘I imagine not.’

‘Thank you for that.’

They turned down the familiar corridor to the parlour and Sigrid’s grip on Bofur’s arm got tighter with each stride.

‘You'll be fine,’ Bofur murmured quietly again, giving her hand a squeeze as he tried to pry it off his own arm. ‘Come on now. In you go and I'll just find a safe place to listen to your dying screams.’

‘I hate you.’

‘Oh c’mon, it's tradition at this point!’ He gave her a quick hug, hand sweeping over her back soothingly and pressed a whiskery kiss to her cheek. ‘Good luck. Knock ‘em dead sweetheart.’

Sigrid huffed a sigh and straightened up, pushing her shoulders back and tipping her head back to glare down her nose at the closed door. She shook out her arms a little and cleared her throat as quietly as she could manage.

She could do this.

She could totally do this.

2 hours. No big deal…

She caught movement out of the corner of her eye and turned to see Bofur grinning and giving her double thumbs up from the corner of the corridor. He didn’t quite get the opportunity to properly laugh at her frantically waving him away before they both heard the thundering of feet. Bofur turned his head up the corridor and just about managed to throw himself clear as Fili rounded the corner at full tilt.

‘I thought you were already in there!’ Sigrid hissed in alarm. ‘You were supposed to be, you know, making introductions and setting the ground rules and-’

‘I’m sorry,’ he panted, hands on his knees as he gulped for air. ‘Kili needed talking down off the ledge and I lost track of time.’

‘Oh God,’  Sigrid muttered, her hands coming up to cover her eyes briefly before dropping one to rub between Fili’s shoulder blades. ‘Who’s he challenged to pistols at dawn in Hyde Park this time?’

‘BNP,’ he wheezed. ‘Article from a representative about how there’s an ISIS plot to infiltrate the Royal family-’

‘Say no more. Is Tauriel alright?’

’Yeah, she’s fine.’ Fili looked up at her, his face flushed and his hair a mess from running. ‘Just took a red pen to the article. I think she plans to send the woman a critique with ‘Could do better’ written across the top. She’s with him and Bilbo’s all but sitting on him to keep him in check.’

‘Durins,’ Sigrid muttered fondly, shaking her head as he straightened up and pulled his collar straight. ‘You are ridiculous, all of you.’

‘Yeah, but you love me.’

‘I do. God help me.’

Fili’s grin softened as he slipped his hand into hers, lacing their fingers together and brought her knuckles up to his lips.

‘I love you too,’ he murmured and Sigrid felt the colour rising in her cheeks as they twitched, wrestling with the giddy grin that was trying to manifest itself.

‘OK, enough of that,’ she said ruefully and Fili smirked against her hand. He lowered their hands together, his right in her left, and swiped his thumb over the warm band around her finger. ‘Come on, what is she going to think when she sees us like this? Let’s get this over with.’

‘Hey, you picked her out,’ Fili hissed, tipping his head towards the door. ‘You said you liked her work and she was agreeable to the terms.’

‘Oh she was. Very.’ Sigrid straightened the skirt of her dress with quick fingers. ‘Doesn’t mean I have to like it.’

‘Come on.’ He chuckled and tugged her towards the closed door, rapping his knuckles against it gently. ‘2 hours. How hard can it be?’

‘Don't say that!’

\--------------------------------------------------

‘A Royal Engagement’

An interview with His Highness, Prince Fili and Miss Sigrid Bowman in the wake of the announcement of their engagement.

Written by Arwen Peredhil.

When the couple, finally, joins me in the Princess Royal’s parlour, the sun has broken through the cloud bank and light is filling the room. It catches on the frames of photos, scattered across nearly every flat surface. Older family portraits, a little faded, sit nestled next to fresh candid shots. The subjects are varied but the theme seems constant. Ever set of eyes is smiling; even those of the corgis’ flopped over Prince Kili’s stomach in one shot taken on Balmoral’s front lawns. The last three years has seen joy flourish in Clarence House and, as the British and Commonwealth public, we've seen that. And I hope, like me, you've shared in it.

‘This one’s my favourite,’ Prince Fili says with a soft grin, passing me a frame. The entire royal household and a few other familiar faces seem to have managed to squeeze into the shot. I suspect, and when I ask I’m proved right, that it’s a photo that many of our readers may recognise. Taken late last summer, when the royal family visited the Queen Alexandra Hospital for the extension of the hospitals’ Mental Health and Outpatient Services. This shot was taken a few seconds after its’ twin. The bright smiles that had graced the pages of The Times back in August have crinkled at eyes. King Thorin’s head is thrown back in a manner that suggests his rare and raucous laugh is in the air. Bilbo Baggins is besides him still, only now his elbow is in the King’s ribs and his expression fond. Princess Dis and Miss Tauriel Nejem share similar expressions of amused, playful disgust, each standing either side of the two men, noses wrinkled and tongues trapped between their grinning teeth. Prince Kili appears to be paying the camera no mind at all, tucked close to Tauriel’s side and grinning at the antics of his uncle. The impromptu photo shoot gave the public their first glimpses of the Bowman family. Sigrid’s father, having been all but to attention in the previous shot, has relaxed and is smirking at the camera as if including us in the joke. Sigrid’s siblings seem a little split on the situation; Bain looks bewildered and ready to jump out of the way and Tilda seems to have given to the glee she’s feeling, her smile becoming an unbridled beam.

But it’s the last two occupants of the photo that are the reasons I am here today. I don’t know if they realise it, but as Fili tells me about that day, they adopt a pose mirrored in the photo in my hands, with Sigrid trying to hide her helpless amusement behind the fingers of one hand and the other being occupied by Fili’s, their fingers laced together on his knee and his undivided attention on her.

And, as in the photo left forgotten on my lap, joy shining in his eyes.     

These looks, coming for our once stoic and reserved Prince of Wales, are really quiet something to observe up close and made my task of conducting this interview that much harder, making me feel like I’m intruding in something special.

In all truthfulness, I am, but I was invited and never let it be said I can’t be professional in the face of adversity. Even if that adversity is a couple very much in love.

There’s very little known about how exactly the pair met. Or indeed when they met. I open with that, even if it’s not the details that everyone’s now dying to hear. The pair both stiffen a little and glance over the unoccupied sofa just out of reach before sharing a look that clearly says that there’s an in-joke going on here that I won’t be privy to. Not for the last time in this interview. The journalist in me finds it galling, but the rest of me is fighting the impulse to coo and the pair attempt to smother giggles.

Apparently, the pair blame Princess Dis. The two met here at Clarence House, in the very room that we are now seated in, not long after Fili’s return from his second tour of duty. ‘I’d been invited here for an audience with Princess Dis to discuss my organisation,’ Sigrid says, flicking a quick and curious look between Fili and the other sofa, pressing her lips against the giggles. ‘I met Fili here, and due to security protocol, we had an opportunity to talk.’

‘She shared her lunch with me,’ Fili says with a soft smile, like they were kids meeting in the playground on the first day of school.                 

That was three years ago in May. I think I can speak for the public when I say, we were shocked.

Their relationship was never overtly confirmed, only ever hinted at in the form of some public appearance, always charity, usually health or military related, sometimes both.

‘I think the whispers started about a year ago,’ Fili says with a half-smile. ‘In the wake of ‘Lórien-gate’.’ You may remember dear readers, this time last year, when a tabloid newspaper, which we shall not name here, printed pap shots of the Prince leaving a private residence in Knightsbridge, including a shot of him embracing the statuesque Dr Galadriel Lorien. Stories were circulated by that same tabloid that the two were romantically involved. These were quickly dismissed when it was made public that Prince Fili had been visiting Dr Lorien for therapy and counselling sessions.

‘Her husband told me she laughed for half an hour straight when she stepped out of her door one morning and the press was there, demanding details of our supposed torrid affair.’ Fili’s look has become sardonic and the sigh he gives suggests he is he most put upon soul in existence. ‘Our next appointment was her snorting into the elbow of her jumper at the kitchen table.’

_Right: Dr Galadriel Lorien on her door step, in response to being asked to confirm if the Prince was ‘involved with an Older Woman’._

‘Well, I'm just glad she saw the funny side of it,’ Fili says, running a hand over his face. ‘Balin [Cheif of Staff at Clarence House] was dowsing media fires left and right. He was not impressed that day.’

Dr Lorien did see the funny side of the story and reportedly took utter glee in loudly psychologically analysing those journalists who didn't know when to get out of dodge.

While this particular story died on its’ feet, the discovery of the Prince’s mental health and the treatment he was seeking was widely discussed. ‘I wasn't in a good place when I came back from tour,’ Fili says, his jaw tight. ‘With combat stress and… Everything else. I tried to power through for a few months but ultimately I realised I needed help. Drs Lorien and Greyhem have become invaluable to me and my family over these last years.’

It won't ever go away, he says, but he's better now than he was when he gave his interview discussion his mental well-being and certainly better than when he first sought out COMMS Link.

It was quite something, Sigrid tells me, her eyes never leaving Fili’s profile and her hand tight in his, for Fili to publicly acknowledge the impact combat had had on him. After his interview was published, COMMS Link saw a steady increase of active and ex-service personnel contacting. From actively seeking the organisation’s services to just looking for a friendly ear and impartial advice. People who had previously not wanted to seek help, for a variety of different reasons. But seeing Fili, who lives under one of the fiercest of media microscopes, being open and honest about ‘not being all alright’ and reaching out for help, gave others the courage to do the same.

‘Your name almost became a byword for ‘I've tried to go as far as I can on my own, but I think I need help now’. You let people know, it's OK to need help.’

He’s not ‘fixed’, he insists, but he is coping. Magnificently, Sigrid interjects. But it is like any other illness or injury; you recover, but there are still scars on the skin and anti-bodies in the blood to show for it. And you can't ‘love’ someone's mental illness away. ‘But just having someone else there to acknowledge it, to say ‘I see you hurting and I care’,’ and I’m lose them again. Sigrid reads him like a weather vane and yet she’s the one to turn. Her knees press alongside his and her forehead rests against his temple. Their hands are tangled tight in her lap. ‘It is often more healing than we anticipate.’

_For Fili’s solo interview, where he discusses his mental health following military service, it is available on The Times website. ‘The Long March Home’, written by Haldir Inglor._

But from what I can gather, from interviews, hints, resources and the couple themselves, Sigrid has been by Fili’s side every step of the way. ‘First as a friend,’ Fili clarifies. ‘I didn’t make the best first impression. We met in, umm, fraught circumstances wouldn’t you say?’ Sigrid nods with a shrug. ‘But, despite seeing me in some truly unflattering states, Sigrid’s been, I’m going to say it, you’ve been my rock.’ Sigrid blushes furiously and knocks shoulders with him once more, avoiding eye contact but smiling.

And so their relationship grew; between sessions with COMMS Link, correspondence and visits, official and off the books, their relationship grew. Quietly and steadily.

‘I was selfish,’ Fili admitted. ‘No one knew, outside of the family and a few of the household. This was something I’d never had before and I wanted it to be ours. We kept it quiet.’ 

For three years.

Until, that is, an unassuming announcement appeared in The Times’ ‘hatched, matched and dispatched’ section last month. The world endured 36 hours of uncertainty and hysteria after the printing before a photo of the couple embracing was posted on Tilda Bowman’s Instagram, confirming the announcement.

_Left: The photo posted to Tilda Bowman’s Instagram, (@MerTilda), following the announcement of the couple’s engagement in The Times. Caption reads ‘MY SISTER’S GETTING MARRIED!!! SORRY EVERYONE BUT SHE’S NOW OFF THE MARKET! #PrinceFili, Well I suppose he’ll do. You sure you’re not settling? ;P’_

Sigrid shakes her head and sighs, ‘I still can’t quite believe she wrote that.’

‘Well, I agree with her,’ Fili says with a shrug, ‘you are settling.’ Sigrid’s admonishing shove turns more into her leaning into his side and Fili slipping an arm around her waist.             

So we’ve laid a little ground work, I feel I can ask the big questions now. When I’ve told people I will be conducting this interview, everyone wants to know about the proposal. Where was it, when, how? And Sigrid, how did you react? Clarence House did release a statement that the proposal happened the weekend before the announcement was printed. The proposal took place in the gardens of Clarence House, with family present.

And what I get it another shared look in the place of a conversation. And a revelation.

That wasn’t so much their engagement. That was the announcement of their engagement to the family.

I’m not sure what my face was doing at that moment but the pair of them have to look away from me and school their faces once again.

‘We’re going to tell you two stories,’ Fili says kindly. ‘Once an official statement and one is our own version. But both did happened.’

So COMMS Link, the organisation Sigrid and her family founded and runs, were orchestrating a retreat with their network of volunteers, clients and stakeholders. The trip saw them visiting Minsmere, on the Suffolk coast, for the wildlife and the wilderness. They were also teaming up with the local branch of the RSPB to offer their help for a few days of beach cleaning. And as Prince Fili is one of the most noteworthy patrons of the RSPB, there was only a slight flicker of amazement at his presence on the wind swept beach. For a few days, it was something of a working holiday; they’d sweep the beaches in the area during the better part of day and the afternoon and evenings were given over to exploring the town or therapy sessions and activities as part of COMMS Link. But apparently the last evening was so fine, spring growing into its’ roots even on the North Sea coast, and Fili stole Sigrid away from the hostel COMMS Link had booked.

They walked the length of Dunwich Heath beach, a beach they’d managed to half clear that morning. Despite the chill still lingering in the North Sea, they shucked off shoes and rolled up jeans, toes dragging in the surf.

‘Every now and again, he’d grab me and point out a Ringed Plover or an Avocet nesting,’ Sigrid interjects affectionately. ‘Or shush me so we could hear a Nightingale sing.’ She taps him lightly on the shin with the toe of her shoe.

‘Well, aren’t you glad I did?’, Fili asks and his smile has taken on a slightly smug gleam as he turns to hide it in her hair.

Fili tells me how they'd stopped, hunkering down among the dunes, to listen to the bird song in the dusk air and the rush and pull of the waves, the sky painted gold and lilac with the setting sun, Sigrid’s flyaway halo of hair dancing in the wind and her smile edged with giddy delight and, in Fili’s words, the question tumbled out.

Tumbled out?

Fili has the grace to look a little sheepish. ‘I’ve known, for quite a while now, that, if she’d let me,’ and here he turns once more to Sigrid, his eyes warm and calm. ‘I would spend the rest of my life with her and consider myself blessed for every minute.’ He lifts their entwined hands to his lips, brushing a kiss across her knuckles and she returns the favour to his temple. ‘And in that moment, I found I couldn’t wait any longer.’

‘While it is true the boy is a hopeless romantic,’ Sigrid says gently into the dreamy quiet, during which I may or may not have teared up slightly, ‘he just blurted it out and then stared at me like I was the one who had just gone off script. It was more than a little unexpected.’

‘I think we just sort of stared at each other for half a minute until you asked me to repeat myself.’

‘Then there was another half a minute of shock. On both our parts I think.’ They may be answering my questions, but they are telling each other the story. ‘Then you went to one knee in the sand, took my hand in both of yours’, and asked me again.’

‘And you said ‘yes’.’

‘I think it would be more accurate to say I sobbed ‘yes’ once I’d tackled you to the ground.’

‘You know,’ and suddenly Fili realises they have an audience again. ‘I’d been half drafting speeches and formulating plans in my head for nearly a year at this point-‘

‘Nearly a year!’

‘Yes, nearly a year Sigrid, and it all sort of went into the wind that evening.’

Along with the usual traditions and trimmings of such an event it seems.

‘I didn’t even have the ring on me,’ Fili admits, face rueful. ‘Like I said, it just happened.’

So what did you do?

Fili and Sigrid shared another conspiratorial look before Sigrid fished a simple dark cord from under the neck of her dress. On the cord hangs what looks like a little ring of yellow plastic.

‘Well, once she’d let me up and we’d recovered, I looked down and there it was, sticking out of the sand.’

It’s the plastic neck ring from a bottle of lemonade, the little serrated teeth filed down.

‘We must have missed it on the beach cleaning that morning. It was like it was waiting for us.’ Sigrid must have read the confusion on my face as she smiles placatingly and says, ‘I know it sounds more than a little ridiculous, but lemonade? Means a little something to us.’

And for a few days, only they and the Nightingales knew. ‘I’d spoken to my family,’ Fili says, ‘they knew I wanted to ask her, but we kept it quiet for a few days. We went back to our respective rooms and came home to London and was organised a little family garden party. I don’t tell my family what we were planning but I think they knew. Kili wouldn’t stop grinning and Thorin was kept giving me these proud little smiles and shoulder pats.’

So Clarence House suspected, but what about the Bowman side of the union? I ask Fili if he sought the blessing of Sigrid’s father and I can track the colour as it retreats from Fili’s face. Sigrid just gives her fiancé a sly look and a quirked brow before answering for him.

‘For some reason, and I can’t understand it for the life of me, Fili seems to be terrified of my father.’

‘I don’t know what it is!,’ Fili almost wails. ‘But he just occasionally fixes me with these looks that promise death by flames!’

‘You are ridiculous,’ Sigrid laughs.

‘It’s the sniper’s stare. I swear your father could strike a man down with nothing but sheer force of will.’

‘Then it’s a wonder you’re still standing.’

Readers, it appears Prince Fili neglected to ask Bard Bowman for his daughter’s hand in marriage, because he’s scared of him.

Sigrid’s laughter and spring sunlight infuses the room as I try to catch my breath, forcing down giggles of my own. ‘Didn’t matter anyway,’ Fili mutters as he glares mulishly between the pair of us. ‘He cornered me after our announcement and told me if there hadn’t been an engagement before the summer, he was going to have words with me. Then came the second most terrifying shovel talk I’ve ever been on the receiving end of.’

‘Wait, second?’ Sigrid asks, still a little breathlessly.

‘Oh, for 45 minutes it was the most terrifying. Your father has the training and access to heavy machinery and numerous landscaping projects. They’d never find my body.’ He’s occasionally looking to me through this, as if imploring me to witness his concerns if he ever does disappear into the night. ‘But then your sister gave me exactly the same talk, but with this smile that had way too much teeth. Have you seen Tilda?’ Fili asks me. He nods to a photo of the table behind me, showing the two sisters at an event that required work gloves and muddy jeans rather than ball gowns, both of them smiling at the camera. ‘Look at that face, no jury would ever convict. Then your brother tried, and I admire his effort but after your father and sister, he wasn’t much.’

‘Well Bain’s a sweetheart,’ Sigrid defends, ‘he’s not got an aggressive bone in his body.’

‘So long as it’s not a competition.’

‘Oh, true,’ Sigrid agrees with a serious face. ‘Get him involved in any sort of competition or sport and all bets are off.’ Fili appears to be trying to subtly rub at his jaw line. ‘Cricket,’ Sigrid says simply without look round.

As well as lawn cricket at this party in the gardens of Clarence House, Fili and Sigrid half announce, half re-enacted their engagement for the benefit of the family.

‘My surprise to the ring, that was genuine.’ Sigrid extends her hand when I ask to see it, and I think my expression mirrors the slightly giddy awe in hers. The ring is beautiful; a dark, sea green opal set with delicate diamonds into a platinum band. It doesn’t swamp Sigrid’s fingers, sitting neatly on a capable hand and, it my untutored eye, it looks like it belongs there.

And that’s where we find ourselves. Prince Fili and Miss Bowman engaged to be married. I try out the words, tasting the phrase, and the pair of them seem to curl around each other just that little bit more. So we have the beginning and our current end. But I want to know a little more about the middle of this courtship that has captivated so much of the British public. 

I have to ask the question twice. The pair jump and try to pretend they’ve neither been caught daydreaming nor are they blushing about it. Fili clears his throat and asks me to repeat the question

What was your first date?

‘Coriolanus,’ Fili says confidently. In the few seconds between my question and Fili’s answer Sigrid’s face flashed through thoughtfulness to puzzlement to shock to staring at Fili in incredulity. ‘We went and saw the production Donmar Warehouse, the evening after Sigrid’s re-scheduled meeting with my mother.’

‘You consider that our first date?’ Sigrid sounds faintly dismayed and she’s looking at Fili with something akin to dread.

‘Yes. Yes I do.’

I blink as Sigrid sinks her head into her hands with a quiet moan. ‘But I spent the entire evening fixated on Tom Hiddleston,’ she whines.

‘Umm… yes. You and everyone else in that theatre.’ Fili, revelling somewhat in Sigrid’s embarrassment, leans towards me conspiratorially. ‘Have you seen it?’ he asks me. I have. I was lucky enough to get a ticket to one of National Theatre Live viewings. And I agree with Sigrid’s choice of the word ‘fixated’. ‘I have to admit, I knew next to nothing about Shakespeare at the time. Don’t really know any more now-‘ Sigrid smacks him lightly on the knee with a muttered ‘lies and slander’, ‘but his performance, the entire production, was incredible. And I think I only followed about three fifths of the plot.’ He grins over at Sigrid, her head still in her hands and her ears pink. ‘You knew what was in front of you. You were transported.’

‘I don’t know if I’d say I ‘enjoyed’ it,’ Fili says in a measured tone when I ask him. ‘I am very much enriched for seeing it, and I’d love the opportunity to see the production again, but it really struck something with me and don’t know if you can ‘enjoy’ something that holds up that sort mirror. The plot, the performance. I saw myself in Coriolanus. Not the political views,’ he adds firmly, ‘but having been trained for one thing and having been immersed in it for so long, and then having to change your nature and purpose in a very tight time frame and the resulting jarring feeling of being adrift. I don’t think there has been a better time in my life that I could have seen a production like that. And Tom Hiddleston was truly a force to be reckoned with on stage.’

Sigrid and I are both nodding emphatically, not making eye contact with anyone. They’d been snuck in, Sigrid mumbles from behind a hand hiding the last of her blush. Tickets were a precious as gold dust, but somehow, the pair were able to secure returns for that Thursday evening.

‘We were right at the edge of stage right,’ Sigrid has gone pink cheeked at the memory. ‘I swear Tom made eye contact with me during the bows. And I'm certain he spotted you.’ Fili looks a little awkward, rubbing the back of his neck. ‘He did a bit of a double take, then there was the tweet later that evening.’

_Right: Actor Tom Hiddleston’s tweet (@twhiddleston), after the performance the couple attended. Tweet reads – ‘And Sir, it is no little thing to make mine eyes to sweat compassion.’ An honour to have you with us, Sir. #Coriolanus._

‘I felt like a bit of an interloper,’ Fili admits. ‘It was my first real time out of Clarence House since my return from service. I, well, I looked rough back then and I didn't really understand what was going on.’

‘It's Shakespeare,’ Sigrid states emphatically even as her hand finds his once more and squeezes. ‘Everyone deserves access to Shakespeare.’

And I have to agree with her, especially in this year of celebration of the Bard. I know Lindir Bruinen, our arts correspondent, is going to hunt me down for effectively doing his job for him, but I have to ask. Has the Prince become a fan of theatre?

‘I'm learning,’ he says gruffly as Sigrid laughs again. ‘But Mum’s delighted she’s got you to attend productions now, as opposed to us Durin males, us ‘uncultured swine’.’ He laugh again at her earnest denial of ever calling him that. She'd called Kili that in a row over Lloyd-Webber.

‘Don’t ask,’ Fili warns me, eyes wide and pleading. ‘I can't always fully appreciate the production in front of me, but I'm learning.’ And he appears to be learning for Sigrid. I learn that Sigrid was involved in any theatre society that would have her, during her undergraduate course in psychology at Middlesex University.

‘I was always a chorus girl,’ Sigrid says with a rueful shake of the head and a small, slightly sad smile, ‘but I always had incredible fun.’

Certainly not a chorus girl now, I say. Sigrid stills and ducks her head and I immediately want to kick myself. The whole world knows that anyone marrying into the British Royal family is in for the role of a lifetime. For the rest of that lifetime. There are no understudies, there are no rehearsals, no rest days. Every aspect of her life is going to be critiqued and reviewed by people who do not know her. I find myself looking at her now. This young woman, younger than myself, who confessed to being the first people in her family to stumble out of the flat fields of Lincolnshire and go to university. Who built a support network for those she loves and those she’s never met from the ground up with her bare hands. 

‘Well,’ she says after a moment. ‘I couldn’t ask for a better supporting cast. And,’ here she gives Fili a smile that I want to bottle, ‘there’s no leading man I’d rather share the lime light with.’

I have to take a moment to compose myself. Not that I suspect either of them noticing. They are in their own little world again, one that they’ve been dipping in and out of though out this interview. Where it is just the two of them. Two young people, facing down an uncertain future, with an uncharted sea on all sides. They are a first; never has such a match form in the royal family. Some have painted it as something out of a fairy tale, Sigrid cast in the role of Cinderella. Sigrid pulls a face when I mention it. Fili barks a laugh and starts throwing out alternative Disney princesses for appraisal. He keeps coming back to Tiana, Merida and Belle.

Despite the fact that we wrap up this interview with these two swatting at each other in a manner more reminiscent of Cogsworth and Lumiere, I feel that I have been privileged to see something magical indeed here.

Theirs’ isn’t a Disney meeting and romance; there was no slipper, no spinning wheel, no poison apple. It’s been hard graft, and there’s more to come. Their engagement has only been public knowledge a few days and already speculations on the Royal Wedding, already capitalised in the minds of many, are rife.

‘We don’t have a date yet,’ Fili says, rubbing at the back of his neck with the expression of a school boy trying to come up with a reason as to why his homework’s not finished. ‘So far all we’ve got is Westminster Abbey.’

I ask Sigrid how she feels about this, her wedding day being ‘An Event’. With TV coverage. She purses her lips and her eyebrows crinkle in worry. ‘I don’t really know how I feel yet. I know this is going to get away from us, the planning and such, but I think I may be alright with that. I can’t even begin to comprehend the scale of the operation. As long as my family and friends are there, and you and yours of course,’ she says knocking Fili’s shoulder with hers, ‘I think I can handle any of the requirements that are going to come with it all. I mean, I know a lot of people dream up their weddings at a young age, but I’ve never dwelt on it. There isn’t a church I ‘have’ to get married in. My parents were married in a chaplaincy of a barracks while they were stationed in Germany. I don’t think it’s even there anymore.’ She looks a little wistful for a moment, but rallies when a thought come to her. ‘Oh, but I have thought about music. We are not having ‘Morning Has Broken’ or ‘All Things Bright And Beautiful’.’

‘And, unfortunately, I don’t think we are having John Williams either,’ Fili interjects and Sigrid rolls her eyes with a growl.

‘If I can’t walk down the aisle to Williams’ ‘The Throne Room’, then no Rutter either!’

I don’t know for sure what sort of princess we will see in Miss Sigrid Bowman. I’ve caught glimpses of the Disney ideals from her in these two hours; Merida’s spirit, Tiana’s graft, Belle’s resolve, Pocahontas’ council, Cinderella’s gentleness, Jasmine’s wit. But as I pack away my notebook and look up to see the pair heatedly debating musical merit, another Princess comes to mind.

Sigrid brushes at the hair falling out of her milkmaid braids and into her face as she pokes Prince Fili in the chest. This is a young woman who has worked tirelessly for her family and her people. Who has gone toe to toe with critics and politicians and campaigned shoulder to shoulder with those who need her help. A young woman with grit.

And as she grins wickedly at Fili, his hands thrown up in mock surrender and his head thrown back and his laughter, so like his uncles, colours the air, I see another well known princess.

Ladies and gentleman, I believe we may have a Princess Leia on our hands.

And I hope, that like me, you will welcome her as a truly magnificent addition to the Royal Family.

_Prince Fili wears navy Incotex chinos, a white Turnbull & Asser shirt, a striped Alexander McQueen tie and brown Lobb brogues.  
Miss Sigrid Bowman wears a hunter green Catherine Walker Dress and nude Michael Antonio court heels. And a custom necklace. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In a compromise, they marry on 4th May.
> 
> See any typos or consistancy issues, please let me know.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Tauriel for With Hearts More Proof than Shields](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7245934) by [hobbitystmarymorstan (DraloreShimare)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DraloreShimare/pseuds/hobbitystmarymorstan)




End file.
